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LORD     BEACONSFIELD 
AND    OTHER    TORY    MEMORIES 


BENJAMIN     DISRAELI,     EARL    OF     BEACONSFIELD. 

Photo:    W.  <Sk  D.  Dotvnry. 


/T^ 


LORD 
BEACONSFIELD 

AND  OTHER  TORY  MEMORIES 


BY 

T.    E.    KEBBEL 


WITH   REMBRANDT  PORTRAIT  OF  LORD  BEACONSFIELD 


IV--- 


.«>., 


•      »*.1>.». 


NEW    YORK 

MITCHELL   KENNERLEY 

MCMVII 


^^'^ 

9V^ 

-^^ 


PREFACE. 

In  offering  these  '*  Memories  ''  to  the  pubHc  I  wish 
it  to  be  understood  that,  be  their  value  what  it  may, 
they  depend  for  it  exclusively  on  my  own  personal 
experiences,  and  are  in  no  wise  indebted  to  either  books 
or  hearsay.  In  the  second  place,  it  should  be  stated 
that,  besides  some  passages  introduced  from  my  own 
writings  and  acknowledged  in  their  proper  place,  others 
may  not  improbably  be  found  scattered  up  and  down 
the  pages  of  our  periodical  literature  with  which  I  have 
been  long  connected,  though  at  this  distance  of  time 
I  should  not  know  where  to  look  for  them.  If  any  such 
do  exist,  they  would,  I  am  quite  sure,  form  but  a  very 
small  proportion  of  the  whole  volume,  and  would, 
equally  with  the  rest  of  it,  be  drawn  entirely  from  my 
own  personal  recollections. 

I  am,  of  course,  referring  only  to  those  chapters  which 
follow  the  sketches  of  Lord  Beaconsiield,  as  these  are 
republished  directly,  though  not  without  alteration 
and  re-arrangement,  from  the  columns  of  the  Standard, 

1  have  not  thought  it  necessary  to  restrict  the  book 

entirely  to   anecdote,   narrative,   or   description.     Such 

observations  as  the  matter  in  hand  seemed  naturally 

to    suggest    are    sometimes    introduced,    but    at    long 

intervals  and  in  few  words. 

T.  E.  Kebbel. 

London,  March,  1907. 
♦ 

226377 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER    I.  page: 

LORD    BEACONSFIELD. 
Disraeli   the   Leader   of   a   Reconstructed   Party — ^My   First   Sight 
of   Him — The   PubUcation   of    "  Coningsby  '*   and    **  Sybil  " — 
My   Introduction   to   Disraeli — His   Remarks   on   Bolingbroke         i 

CHAPTER     II. 
LORD    BEACONSFIELD   (continued). 
Disraeli's  Views  on  Lord  Derby's  Refusal  to  Form  a  Government — 
yAs     Reformer — A     Blue-book     Mystery — Lord     Palmerston's 
Second    Administration — Disraeli's    Appreciation    of    Pluck — 
In      Isolation — Literary      Admirations — As      Journalist — His 
Estimate  of  Contemporary  Biography — Attitude  Towards  the 
Church  of  England ij 

CHAPTER     III. 

LORD    BEACONSFIELD    {continued). 

A  Visit  to  Hughenden — Disraeli's  Love  of  Trees — A  Walk  with  Mrs. 

Disraeli — A  Drive  with  Disraeli — His  Views  on  the  Origin  of 

the  Civil  War — After-dinner  Talk— A  Sally  which  Made  one  of 

the  Guests  Look  Grave         .......       30 

CHAPTER  IV. 
LORD  BEACONSFIELD  {continued). 
^Disraeli's  Views  on  Parliamentary  Reform  in  General — The  Reform 
Bill  of  1867  Carried — Mr.  Gladstone's  Strategy  in  1868 — 
Disraeli's  Inadequate  Grasp  of  Church  Questions — His  Admira- 
tion of  the  Whigs — His  Reticence  on  Questions  Affecting  the 
Court  —  His  View  of  "  the  Rupert  of  Debate  "  —  Lady 
Beaconsfield's  Death 3^ 

CHAPTER     V. 
LORD    BEACONSFIELD    {continued), 
"Waking  Up"   ( 1 87 1 )— Opposition  to  the  Ballot— His  Vigilance 

in  the  House — His  Refusal  to  Take  Office  with  a  Minority  ^ 


viii  CONTENTS. 

PAGB 

(1873) — His  Second  Government — The  Public  Worship  Regula- 
tion Act — On  Personal  Government — In  the  Lords — "  Peace 
with  Honour" — Why  he  Did  Not  Dissolve  in  1878 — His 
Eastern  Policy — Illness  and  Death         .....       46 

CHAPTER     VI. 
LORD    BEACONSFIELD    {concluded). 

His  Kindness  to  Friends — Mr.  Montagu  Corry — Lord  Beaconsfield's 
Efforts  to  Serve  the  Author — Not  a  Dandy  in  his  Later  Years 
— His  Popularity  with  the  Farmers  and  the  Peasantry — A 
Defence   of  his   Sincerity — His   Relations   with  the   Author   .        59 

CHAPTER    VII. 
SOME    OTHER   TORY    STATESMEN. 

The  Late  Duke  of  Rutland — Belvoir  Castle  and  the  Squirearchy — 
A  Survival  of  Eighteenth  Century  Toryism — "  Young  England  ** 
— A  Visit  to  Belvoir  Castle — In  the  Belvoir  Kennels — ^The 
Duchess's  Stories  of  the  Imperial  Court — The  Late  Lord  Car- 
narvon :  A  Day  at  Highclere         ,  .  .  .  .  .71 

CHAPTER     VIII. 

SOME   OTHER   TORY    STATESMEN    {concluded). 

The  Late  Lord  Salisbury — Sir  Stafford  Northcote  (Lord  Iddesleigh) 
— Lord  Derby  (the  Fourteenth  Earl) — The  Late  Lord  Beau- 
champ — Lord  Onslow — Some  Canvassing  Experiences — Mr. 
Brodrick — Lord  Balfour  of  Burleigh — Lord  Randolph  Churchill 
— Cecil  Raikes  and  his  Estimate  of  Lord  Beaconsfield — Lord 
Braboume — Sir  Mountstuart  Grant-Duff — Mr.  Arthur  Balfour.       86 

CHAPTER    IX. 
TORY   MEMBERS   I    HAVE   KNOWN. 

Baron  Dimsdale — Origin  of  the  Title — The  Baron  as  a  Party  Man — 
A  Stolid  Audience — Convivial  Electioneering — Lord  Glamis 
and  the  Memory  of  William  III. — An  Elegant  Metaphor — 
Baron  Dimsdale  and  his  Tenants — Mr.  Albert  Pell — A  Retort 
upon  Lord  Curzon — Pell's  Views  on  the  Poor  Law — Sewell  Read 
— Sir  George  Baden-Powell — The  Education  Bill  of  1902 — Mr. 
Balfour's  Frankness     .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .104 


CONTENTS.  ix 

CHAPTER     X. 

THE   CAVE.  PAGE 

Lord  Palmerston's  Domestic  Policy — Formation  of  the  Cave — 
How  the  Whigs  were  "  Dished  " — Lord  Grosvenor's  Amend- 
ment— ^The  Day  and  its  Brief  Career   .  .  .  .  ,121 

CHAPTER  XL 
TORY  LADIES. 
The  Era  of  the  PoHtical  Hostess — Lady  Granville  and  the  Rising 
Liberal  Journalist — Lady  Jeune's  Receptions — Sir  John  Gorst 
and  Lord  Beacons  field's  Funeral — Sir  Richard  Webster — An 
Eminent  Counsel  on  County  Government — Reminiscences  of 
Prince  Charles  Edward — Lady  Ridley — A  Sympathiser  with 
Lord  Iddesleigh — Lady  Carnarvon — Lady  Stanhope — Lady 
Salisbury — Lady  Winifred   Herbert — Mrs.  St.  John  Brodrick       132 

CHAPTER     XII. 
TORY    ARCADIA. 

The  Halfords— Wistow— Sir  Robert  Peel's  Frigidity— The  Old  Duke 
of  Cambridge — His  Dialogue  with  a  Curate — Likened  to  the 
Hippopotamus — A  Question  of  Clerical  Etiquette — Sir  Henry 
Halford,  the  Physician — Could  the  Duke  of  York  have  Pre- 
vented the  Revolution  of  1828-32  ? — The  Second  Sir  Henry 
Halford — The  Last  of  the  Chanticleers — His  Love  for  the 
Classics — The  Family  Becomes  Extinct — The  New  Poor  Law 
— A  Hunt  Breakfast  at  Quom — Boys  and  Port  Wine — The 
Economics  of  County  Influence  —  Parsons  in  Arcadia  — 
Eccentrics    ..........     149 

CHAPTER     XIII. 
TORY     BOHEMIA. 

Journalism  in  the  Mid-century — War  Between  Tory  and  Liberal 
Journalists — James  Hannay  and  G.  A.  Sala — The  Idler — ^The 
Retort  upon  "S.  and  B." — ^The  Company  at  the  "  Cock  "  and 
the  '*  Cheese  " — Edgar  and  His  Love  of  Genealogy — Evans's — 
The  Last  Stage  in  Hannay's  Career — Mortimer  Collins — His 
Eccentricities — His  Love  of  Nature — Charming  a  Thrush — 
Edward  Whitty — A  Bohemian  who  was  Found  Reading  the 
Commination  Service — Antinomies  of  Character — Johnny 
Baker  ..........      171 


X  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER     XIV. 
TORY   CLUBS.  page 

The  Tumbler  and  its  Leading  Spirits — The  Rambler — Installation 
at  Dick's — Witty  Irish  Members — Jack  Ormsby — His  Narrow 
Escape  from  Drowning — His  Liking  for  Practical  Jokes — ^Toryism 
and  Scholarship — Gowan  Evans — Sotheby — Trevor  :  A  Loud 
Snorer — His  Cynicism — George  Danvers  and  the  Sub-editorial 
Nose — Henry  Fawcett — ^Twenty  Years  Afterwards — ^The 
Canning  Club — The  Cecil — The  Junior  Carlton  and  St.  Stephen's     193 

CHAPTER     XV. 
TORY   JOURNALISM   AND   LITERATURE. 

The  Press — ^The  Seeleys,  Father  and  Son — The  New  Quarterly — A 
Subsidy  from  the  Porte — Musurus  Pasha — The  Pall  Mall  Gazette 
Founded — ^Mr.  Frederick  Greenwood — The  County  Government 
Bill— The  Pall  Mall  Staff— A  Wink  from  an  Archdeacon— The 
Yorkshire  Post :  A  Start  Under  Difficulties — Joining  the 
Staff  of  the  Standard — Writing  Leaders  by  Snatches — System 
of  Payment — Invited  to  Join  the  Times  Staff — Mr.  Mudford — 
Mr.  Curtis — The  Standard  Changes  Hands — Contributions  to 
the  Quarterly  Review — Its  Editors — Founding  of  the  National 
Review — Articles  in  the  Fortnightly  and  in  the  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury— Sir  James  Knowles — Fraser's  and  Blackwood's — 
Lord  Edmond  Fitzmaurice  and  Junius — Mr.  Sidney  Low 
and   Mr.  Jeyes — Mr.  William  Blackwood         .  .  .  .216 

CHAPTER     XVI. 

TORY    DEMOCRACY. 

Lord  Randolph  Churchill's  Definition  of  Tory  Democracy — What 

Lord   Beaconsfield   Meant   by  It — ^Toryism   in  the  Eighteenth 

Century — Peasantry    and    Gentry — Tory    Proclivities    of    the 

Artisan    Class — ^The  Peasantry  and  "  Methodies  "  .         .     254 

CHAPTER     XVII. 

TORY   SPORTSMEN. 

The   Late  Lord   Stanley   of  Alderley  —  A  Mahometan   Supporter 

of    the    Church   of   England  —  Coot-Shooting   at   Alderley  — 

George  Baden-Powell — Southey's    Small   Band  of  Admirers — 

A    Writing    Contest    with    Lord     Stanley — Trespassers — Lord 


CONTENTS.  xi 

Stanley's  Eccentricities — Solitary  Shoots — Wind  and  Rain — 
A  Shooting  Bishop — ^The  Editor  of  the  Edinburgh  Review 
— The  Dowager  Lady  Stanley — Her  Treatment  of  a  Fellow- 
Passenger — More  About  Shooting — A  Murderous  Ass — ^Three 
Welsh  Parsons — At  a  Welsh  Manor  House — A  Welsh  Dissenter 
and  His  Little  Superstitions — Colonel  Talbot — A  Reminiscence 
of  the  Fourteenth  Earl  of  Derby — Lord  Stanley  of  Alderley's 
Mastiffs — A  Tenants'  Ball — ^Morris  Dancing — Making  Converts 
— A  Compliment  from  Lord  Strathnaim        .  .  .  .261 

CHAPTER  XVIII. 
TORY  AGRICULTURISTS. 
Where  the  Allotment  System  Originated — Difference  Between  Allot- 
ments and  Small  Holdings— The  "  Tatur  Field  "—Advantages 
of  a  Large  System  of  Peasant  Farming — A  Call  to  Landowners 
for  Combined  Action — A  Co-operative  Farm  Forty  Years  Ago — 
The  Tenant  Farmer,  Old  Style 288 

CHAPTER  XIX. 
OXFORD  TORYISM. 
Distinct  Types  of  Toryism  at  Oxford — Sewell — Dr.  Marsham — 
Mucklestone  —  Mitchell  —  Dr.  Routh  —  Tommy  Short  —  Dr. 
Symonds — Plumptre  and  Punch — Dr.  Pusey — His  Toryism — 
An  Apparition — Newman — Lost  Causes  and  False  Quantities — 
Mansel — Mark  Pattison — Halford  Vaughan — Brocket  of  St. 
Dunstan's   .  **      .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .      299 

CHAPTER     XX. 
TORY   INNS. 
Rival  Inns — ^Tory  Inns  on  the  Road  to  London — A  Tory  Tavern- 
keeper's     Horror     of     Mechanics'    Institutes  —  Tory     Shops 
and  Whig  Shops — A  Candid  Tory  Fishmonger — ^The  Engine- 
driver  and  the  Statesman   .  .  .  .  .  .  •      313 

CHAPTER     XXI. 
OUR   VILLAGE. 
The  Village  Described — ^The  Vicar — Farmer  Dryman — John  Ashcot 
the    Yeoman — The    Village    Blacksmith — Farmer    Wright — A 


xii  *         CONTENTS. 


PAGE 


True  Blue — ^The  Feast — Christmas  Celebrations — The  Parish 
Clerk — An  Antinomian  Dissenter — A  Versatile  Constable — 
Village  Termagants — The  Scythe  and  the  Flail — A  Happy 
£Lnd  Contented  Population  —  The  Clothing  Club — Old  Poor 
Law  and  the  New        ........     319 

CHAPTER  XXII. 
RETROSPECT. 
Childhood  and  Old  Age — Effect  on  the  Tory  Party  of  the  Reform 
Act  of  1832 — Of  the  Oxford  Revival — Of  the  Young  England 
Movement — Protection — ^The  Present  Economic  Reaction — 
The  Future — Present  Position  of  the  Church  of  England — 
Decline  of   the  House  of  Commons — A  Last  Word    .         .         342 


LORD     BEACONSFIELD 

AND    OTHER 

TORY    MEMORIES, 

CHAPTER    I. 

LORD   BEACONSFIELD. 

Disraeli  the  Leader  of  a  Reconstructed  Party — My  First  Sight  of  Him 
— The  PubUcation  of  "  Coningsby  "  and  "  Sybil  " — My  Introduc- 
tion to  Disraeli — His  Remarks  on  Bolingbroke. 

The  first  time  I  saw  Lord  Beaconsfield  was  a  few  years 
after  I  had  left  Oxford  and  had  rehnquished  all  thoughts 
of  following  my  fortunes  at  the  Bar,  to  which  I  had 
been  originally  destined.  On  leaving  the  University 
I  took  chambers  in  the  Temple,  and  hoped  for  two  or 
three  years  that  I  might  be  able  to  pursue  the  path 
chalked  out  for  me.  But  family  circumstances  soon 
made  it  evident  to  me  that  I  must  find  some  more 
immediate  means  of  supporting  myself  without  further 
assistance  from  my  relations. 

At  that  time  journalism  had  not  become  the  common 
resort  of  gentlemen  in  want  of  an  income,  and  unwilling 
or  unable  to  wait  for  the  tardy  returns  to  be  expected 
from  the  regular  professions.  The  estimation  in  which 
it  was  held  in  those  days  is  described  with  perfect 
truth  by  Trollope  in  his  novel  of  ''  He  Knew  He  Was 
Right.''  The  pubUc  in  general,  and  country  people 
in  particular,  had  the  haziest  conception  of  the 
machinery  by  which  newspapers  were  produced.     That 


•'i"''-'-''   ''tORY   MEMORIES. 

the  higher  class  papers  afforded  regular  and  remu- 
nerative employment  to  a  limited  number  of  educated 
gentlemen  was  what  few  country  parsons  or  squires 
who  did  not  mix  much  in  London  Society  or  in 
literary  circles  understood  or  believed.  And  it  was 
not  all  at  once  that  journalism  occurred  to  me  in  the 
light  of  a  possible  career  and  a  short  cut  to  indepen- 
dence. I  had,  however,  ventured  to  send  one  or  two 
short  pieces  to  the  Press  newspaper,  then  recently 
established  as  the  organ  of  the  Tory  Opposition;  and 
I  remember  that  while  I  was  sitting  at  breakfast  in  our 
country  parsonage  at  home  one  morning  in  1855, 
dismally  meditating  on  the  dreary  prospect  which  con- 
fronted me,  the  postman  brought  me  a  letter  which 
decided  my  fate.  It  was  from  Mr.  Coulton,  the  Editor  of 
the  Press y  which  at  that  time  was  said  by  Mr.  Gladstone 
to  be  *'  admirably  written,"  offering  me  a  place  on  the 
paper,  which  I  at  once  accepted  ;  and  as  Mr.  Disraeli  (for 
so  must  we  continue  to  call  Lord  Beaconsfield  throughout 
the  greater  part  of  these  reminiscences)  was  in  frequent 
communication  with  Mr.  Coulton,  it  was  not  long  before 
I  came  m  contact  with  the  great  man  himself. 

Mr.  Disraeli  at  that  time  was  firmly  established 
as  the  Leader  of  the  Conservative  Party  in  the  House 
of  Commons.  He  had  gained  their  confidence  by  the 
skill  with  which  he  had  re-formed  their  broken  ranks, 
had  reclaimed  to  their  colours  numerous  waverers  or 
deserters,  and  finally  had  formed  a  Government  which 
the  pubhc  in  general  allowed  to  have  played  its  part 
with  dignity  and  efficiency.  He  always  looked  back 
on  this  stage  of  his  career  with  great  satisfaction.  He 
often  told  me  of  the  pains  which  he  had  taken  to 
reconstruct   the   party  and   the  success  which  had   re- 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  3 

warded  them.  The  Conservative  Ministry  of  1852 
showed  how  well  he  had  performed  his  task.  Out  of 
the  broken  and  dispirited  remnants  which  accepted  his 
leadership  in  1848  he  had  built  up  a  powerful  Opposition, 
had  drawn  from  its  ranks  men  capable  of  filling  with 
credit  the  highest  offices  in  the  State,  and  had  shown 
the  world  that  there  was  again  a  Conservative  Party 
qualified  both  by  numbers  and  ability  to  take  the 
reins  of  government  whenever  the  Liberals  should  drop 
them.  To  the  younger  generation  of  Tories  he  pre- 
sented just  that  combination  of  originality,  courage 
and  wit  which  was  a  welcome  change  after  the  Par- 
liamentary respectabihty  which  followed  the  death 
of  Mr.  Canning.  They  asked  for  nothing  better. 
After  the  great  tergiversation  of  1846  and  the  coalition 
of  contradictories  in  1853,  men  had  ceased  to  inquire 
too  curiously  about  principles. 

The  personal  recollections  to  which  my  articles 
in  the  Standard  were  as  closely  as  possible  confined 
will  here  be  extended  to  all  such  reminiscences  as 
are  in  any  way  connected  with  the  name  and  fame 
of  the  Tory  leader,  showing  how  his  influence  per- 
meated all  ranks  of  society,  and  how  wide  and  how 
deep  was  the  impression  created,  apart  from  all 
political  considerations,  by  his  unique  personality.  I 
remember  my  first  sight  of  him  well ;  and,  though  but 
momentary,  it  printed  itself  on  my  mind  in  more  vivid 
and  lasting  colours  than  any  subsequent  interviews 
of  much  longer  duration.  At  that  time,  when  Parha- 
ment  was  sitting,  it  was  the  custom  of  Mr.  Coulton 
every  Friday  night  to  go  down  to  the  House  of  Com- 
mons as  late  as  could  conveniently  be  managed,  return- 
ing to  the  office  in  the  Strand  with  a  bundle  of  pencil 


4  TORY   MEMORIES. 

notes  dictated  by  Mr.  Disraeli,  to  be  moulded  into 
the  first  leader  for  next  day's  paper.  He  more  often 
than  not  brought  back  with  him  some  terse  and  neatly 
turned  sentences,  or  some  epigrammatic  sarcasm,  which 
savoured  of  the  master  hand.  Coulton  was  a  capital 
writer,  but  he  had  not  that  particular  gift.  "  Lord 
Aberdeen's  Peace  Government  against  its  will  drifted 
into  war,  and  Lord  Palmerston's  War  Government 
against  its  will  drifted  into  peace,"  was  a  sentence 
which  exactly  hit  off  the  situation  in  the  winter  of 
1856.  It  was  Disraeh's  object,  in  this  epigram,  to 
show  that  a  Coalition  Government  could  have  no 
fixed  or  definite  policy,  and  must  be  at  the  mercy  of 
events. 

It  was  my  business  at  this  time  to  go  down  to  Mr. 
Coulton's  house,  which  is  now,  I  think,  16,  Old  Queen 
Street,  Westminster,  every  Thursday  afternoon,  to 
arrange  about  articles  ;  and  there,  for  the  first  time,  I 
set  eyes  upon  my  future  patron.  He  was  coming  out 
of  Mr.  Coulton's  house  just  as  I  was  going  in,  and  I 
remember  that  Coulton  said  two  or  three  words  to  him 
which  I  did  not  distinctly  catch,  but  I  suppose  they 
referred  to  the  newcomer.  He  threw  a  careless  side- 
glance  at  myself  as  he  walked  out,  and  I  see  him  before 
my  mind's  eye  now  as  clearly  as  I  did  at  that  moment. 
He  was  then  in  his  fifty-second  year,  and  looked  younger. 
His  lithe,  erect  figure,  clad  in  the  well-known  black 
frock-coat,  buttoned  rather  low  down,  the  grey  trousers, 
the  black  or  dark  green  neckerchief,  tied  with  a  neat 
bow — for  he  seldom,  I  think,  wore  anything  else — 
all  fixed  themselves  in  my  memory,  though  the  features 
which  surmounted  them  might  well  have  absorbed 
my  attention    to    the    exclusion    of    everything  else. 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  5 

It  was  a  face,  I  thought,  indicative  of  great  reserve 
power,  and  bore  the  cachet  which  Mr.  Thackeray  says 
is  always  visible  in  great  men  :  ''  They  may  be  as  mean 
on  many  points  as  you  or  I :  but  they  carry  their  great 
air.  They  speak  of  common  life  more  largely  and 
generously  than  common  men  do.  They  regard  the 
world  with  a  manlier  countenance,  and  see  its  real 
features  more  fairly  than  the  timid  shufflers  who  only 
dare  look  at  life  through  blinkers  or  to  have  an  opinion 
when  there  is  a  crowd  to  back  it."  This  is  so  curiously 
applicable  to  Mr.  Disraeli,  and  so  eminently  charac- 
teristic of  his  whole  career,  that  I  wonder  it  has  never 
been  applied  to  him. 

It  was  not  till  two  years  afterwards  that  I  was 
actually  introduced  to  Mr.  Disraeli,  and  in  the  mean- 
time, before  referring  to  the  conversations  with  which 
from  time  to  time  he  was  kind  enough  to  indulge  me, 
I  must  revert  to  an  earlier  period  and  to  the  work 
which  first  attracted  the  attention  of  the  world  at 
large,  who  knew  little  as  yet  of  his  parliamentary 
reputation  or  of  the  earlier  novels  which,  with  the 
exception  perhaps  of  *'  Vivian  Grey,"  were  almost 
forgotten. 

I  remember  an  elder  brother  coming  down  from 
London  during  my  school  holidays  and  astonishing 
us  all  with  the  marvellous  tale  of  '*  Young  England." 
*'  Have  you  read  *  Coningsby  '  ?  "  was,  he  assured  us, 
on  everyone's  lips.  Not  to  have  read  ''  Coningsby " 
was  what  Count  Mirabel  in  ''Henrietta  Temple  "  would 
have  called  a  bitise.  People  in  general,  however,  did 
not  know  what  to  make  of  it ;  and  no  one  described  the 
sensation  which  it  created  in  fashionable  circles  better 


6  TORY    MEMORIES. 

than  the  author  himself.  The  dandy  who  had  dined 
with  the  Regent,  and  was  a  dandy  still,  enjoying  life 
as  much  as  ever,  inquires  of  his  friend  Mr.  Melton, 
supposed  to  have  been  meant  for  James  Macdonal, 
what  this  new  thing  was  that  young  Coningsby  had 
brought  from  abroad,  and  which  everybody  was  going 
to  believe  in.  *'  A  sort  of  magnetism,  or  unknown 
tongues,''  the  dandy  concluded  it  must  be.  On  hear- 
ing that  it  was  not  that  sort  of  thing  at  all,  but  that 
it  required  a  ''  deuced  deal  of  history,'*  he  observed 
that  ''  one  must  brush  up  one's  Goldsmith."  I  merely 
quote  from  so  well-known  a  book  to  show  the  absurd 
ideas  which  "  Coningsby  "  inspired  in  some  quarters. 
Another  class  felt  more  aggrieved  by  the  ''  Venetian 
Constitution."  To  have  all  their  previous  ideas  of 
our  glorious  Constitution  in  Church  and  State  sud- 
denly upset  by  a  novel !  Who  was  the  upstart  who 
thus  ventured  to  tamper  with  all  our  most  cherished 
traditions  ?  Out  on  him !  Young  England  indeed ! 
and  grave  men  would  sometimes  mutter  the  name 
of  Rehoboam,  and  ask  how  it  fared  with  him  when  he 
chose  to  rely  on  young  Israel. 

This  was  the  kind  of  talk  which  went  on  in  many 
a  country  parsonage  and  manor  house ;  and  such 
prejudices  were  not  mitigated  by  Henry  Sidney's  views 
about  the  peasantry  or  the  praises  bestowed  upon 
Eustace  Lyle,  which  were  thought  to  savour  of  Popish 
proclivities,  and  still  further  fomented  the  alarm  which 
the  Roman  Catholic  Relief  Act  had  kindled,  and  which 
the  Oxford  movement  had  inflamed.  Then,  of  course, 
all  the  ridiculous  stories  with  which  we  have  so  long 
been  familiar  were  raked  up  against  Disraeli  —  his 
first   parhamentary  speech,  the   green  velvet  coat,  the 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  7 

long  ringlets,  the  laced  ruffles.  Such  was  the  atmo- 
sphere in  which  my  first  impressions  of  Mr.  Disraeli 
were  formed.  But  there  was  a  counter  influence  at 
work  which  tended  slowly  to  modify  them.  By  the 
older  people  this  was  not  so  much  felt,  but  by  the 
younger  generation,  who  had  come  under  the  influence 
of  the  Oxford  revival,  it  was  soon  recognised,  and 
especially  after  the  publication  of  ''  Sybil,''  that  these 
striking  pictures  represented  only  one-half  of  a  great 
religious  and  political  movement,  of  which  the  other 
half  had  started  from  Oriel.  I  doubt  if  Mr.  Disraeli 
himself  ever  saw  the  connection  between  the  two  so 
clearly  as  he  might  have  done.  Had  he  done  so,  it 
would  have  saved  him  from  some  mistakes  which  exer- 
cised a  mischievous  effect  on  his  after  life. 

But,  at  all  events,  in  ''  Sybil ''  he  had  given  such 
apparent  evidence  of  his  sympathies  with  Anglicanism, 
and  showed  so  much  apparent  insight  into  the  real 
history  of  the  Church,  that  all  the  younger  Tories  and 
High  Churchmen  began  to  look  to  him  as  a  champion 
who  might  in  the  end  do  as  much  for  their  principles 
as  Mr.  Gladstone.  Young  men  who  had  been  taught  to 
regard  Charles  I.  as  a  martyr  and  the  Rebellion  as  a  great 
crime,  found  it  hard  to  reconcile  this  belief  with  what 
they  were  equally  required  to  profess — namely,  that 
William  HI.  was  a  hero,  and  the  Revolution  a  great 
blessing.  They  had,  however,  accepted  the  current 
theory  without  much  inquiry,  though  Scott  had  done 
something  to  make  them  suspicious  of  it ;  and  when 
Mr.  Disraeli  cut  the  Gordian  knot  by  declaring  that  the 
popular  view  of  1688  was  founded  on  a  total  misconcep- 
tion of  the  national  history,  they  welcomed  the  dis- 
covery with  enthusiasm. 


8  TORY    MEMORIES. 

Of  course,  it  was  imputed  to  him  that  he  meant  a 
great  deal  more  than  this,  and  that  under  his  denuncia- 
tion of  the  Venetian  Constitution  lurked  the  intention 
of  reviving  personal  government.  That  such  an  idea 
ever  took  practical  shape  in  his  mind  I  do  not  believe. 
What  he  told  me  himself  has  always  led  me  to  suppose 
that  his  aim  was  rather  to  correct  what  he  thought  some 
mistaken  views  of  English  history  than  to  suggest 
any  monarchical  revival  for  present  adoption. 
"  Coningsby  '*  called  popular  attention  to  what  had 
really  been  done  by  the  legislation  of  1828,  1829,  and 
1832.  The  old  Constitution,  whatever  its  faults  or  its 
vices,  Venetian  or  Batavian,  was  something,  as  Mr. 
Gladstone  has  somewhere  said,  in  which  a  man  could 
believe  as  a  whole :  something  which  supplied  him 
with  a  real  political  faith.  Mr.  Disraeli  did  not  think 
that  its  place  was  supplied  by  the  Tam worth  Manifesto. 
But  that  the  void  might  be  filled  by  a  revival  of  the 
old  form  of  monarchy  was  an  idea  which  never,  I 
think,  passed  out  of  the  realm  of  imagination  into 
the   region  of   reality. 

As    I    got    to    know  him    better    I  became    aware 
how  large  a  part  in  his  political  speculations  had  been 
played   by   his   imagination.      It   dwelt   fondly   on   the 
spectacle  presented  by  the  Tory  party  under   the  first 
two  Georges,  on  their  struggle  with  the  Whig  oligarchy, 
and  on  the  efforts  of    Tory  statesmen  to  emancipate 
the   Crown  from   their    control.     That    the    author    of 
'*  Coningsby  "  may  have  amused   himself  by  living  in 
an  ideal  world,  and  brooding  so  closely  over  past   con- 
ditions as  to  fancy  himself  for  the  moment  in  the  midst 
of    them,    is    a   tenable   hypothesis    supported    by  the 
example  of  Sir  Walter  Scott.     But  we  may  be   satis- 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  9 

fied  with  thinking  that  the  theories  of  ''  Coningsby  '* 
and  '*  Sybil  "  were  put  forward  rather  as  a  contribu- 
tion to  the  history  of  England  and  an  exposure  of  the 
false  impressions  which  had  been  handed  down  by  in- 
terested parties,  than  with  any  ulterior  object  or  any 
serious  intention  of  reducing  them  to  practice. 

My  reason  for  thinking  so  is  this.  After  the  down- 
fall of  the  Palmerston  Ministry  in  1858,  the  Press 
changed  hands,  and  I  ceased  to  be  a  political  contributor. 
Then  I  thought  I  should  like  to  see  Mr.  Disraeh,  and, 
as  this  was  easily  managed,  I  was  invited  on  a  certain 
day  to  call  at  Grosvenor  Gate — I  think  on  a  Sunday. 
He  received  me  very  kindly,  and,  perhaps,  with  his 
peculiar  views  on  the  subject  of  youth,  my  age  told 
in  my  favour.  I  remember  being  much  impressed — 
perhaps,  indeed,  rather  amused — by  one  little  cir- 
cumstance which  occurred  while  I  was  sitting  with  him. 
A  servant  brought  him  in  a  card,  which  he  looked  at 
attentively  for  a  minute,  and  then  said,  ''  Tell  his 
Highness  I  will  be  with  him  very  shortly,''  and  then 
turned  round  to  renew  the  conversation  about  Boling- 
broke  with  your  humble  servant.  Without  referring 
directly  to  his  estimate  of  that  statesman  given  in 
'*  Coningsby,"  he  spoke  very  highly  of  him,  and  ad- 
vised me   particularly  to   read  his   correspondence. 

I  left  Grosvenor  Gate  without  any  reason  to  think 
that  less  was  meant  by  the  political  speculations  which 
had  so  startled  the  public  when  they  first  appeared  than 
I  had  hitherto — perhaps  too  readily — supposed.  But 
shortly  after  the  above  conversation  I  wrote  an  article 
on  Bolingbroke  for  Eraser's  Magazine ,  of  which  Mr. 
Froude  was  then  editor,  when,  in  spite  of  my  reverence 
for  the  author  of  ''  Coningsby,"  I  took  occasion  to  ask 


10  TORY    MEMORIES. 

whether,  had  Lord  BoHngbroke  continued  to  take  an 
active  part  in  pubUc  affairs  after  the  death  of  Queen 
Anne,  he  would  ever  have  indulged  in  such  reflections 
as  we  find  in  *'  The  Patriot  King  '*  and  elsewhere.  But 
for  the  policy  of  proscription  initiated  by  the  Whigs  in 
1714,  BoHngbroke  would  have  taken  office  under  George 
I.  *'  He  beheved  himself,'*  I  said,  "  a  second  Cicero 
in  exile,  and  gratified  his  taste  by  a  great  deal  of  fine 
writing  to  prove  that  Walpole  and  his  party  were  re- 
enacting  the  part  of  Augustus,  who  only  exercised 
absolutism  more  readily  through  the  medium  of  a  servile 
Senate.  But  such  language  as  this  was  not  natural 
to  the  man.  His  brain  was  too  strong,  his  intellect  too 
masculine,  not  at  once  to  have  seen  through  the  weak- 
ness of  his  own  position,  had  he  been  obliged  to  look 
it  fairly  in  the  face.  He  must  have  known  well 
enough  that  no  monarchy  could  be  permanent  which 
depended  upon  the  character  of  a  single  individual. 
His  experience  of  James  H.  must,  we  should 
think,  have  opened  his  eyes,  if  they  wanted  any 
opening." 

On  Mr.  Disraeli's  receipt  of  a  volume  that  con- 
tained this  essay,  he  wrote  me  a  letter,  which  will  be 
found  on  another  page,  expressing  warm  approval  of  its 
contents,  including  the  article  on  BoHngbroke.  The 
next  time  I  saw  him  I  asked  him  in  person  the  same 
question  which  I  had  raised  in  my  essay  :  What  did  he 
think  would  have  happened  had  Queen  Anne  lived  till 
BoHngbroke  had  matured  his  schemes,  and  secured 
the  ascendency  of  the  Tory  Party  throughout  the 
country.  He  said  that  if  BoHngbroke  had  restored 
the  Stuarts,  and  the  Stuarts  had  been  reconciled  to 
the  Church  of  England,  there  need  have  been  no  such 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  ii 

startling  change  as  some  historians  have  supposed. 
Government  would  have  been  carried  on  much  as  it 
had  been  under  Anne.  Had  Bolingbroke,  on  the  other 
hand,  succeeded  in  making  terms  with  ''  the  Elector 
of  Hanover,  and  placing  a  Tory  king  upon  the  throne, 
St.  John  himself  would  simply  have  been  another 
Walpole.'*  In  that  case  we  should  probably  have 
avoided  two  costly  wars,  some  millions  of  debt,  and  a 
good  deal  of  ParHamentary  corruption.  Bolingbroke 
and  the  Tories  would  have  carried  on  the  administration 
instead   of   Walpole   and   the   Whigs. 

"  Then,  sir,"  I  said,  **  we  should  still  have  had 
the  Venetian  Constitution,  and  the  Sovereign  would 
still  have  been  a  Doge.''  "  No,"  he  said,  ''  not  the 
Venetian  Constitution.  The  country  would  not  have 
been  governed  by  a  few  great  Whig  families — the 
Council  of  Ten,  who  kept  all  real  power  in  their 
own  hands.  The  Sovereign,  indeed,  might  still  have 
been  a  Doge,  but  that  would  have  been  owing  to 
his  ignorance  of  England  and  English  affairs,  not  to 
the  deliberate  purpose  of  the  oligarchy."  '*  But,"  I 
continued,  *'  how  would  Bolingbroke  and  the  first  two 
Georges  have  agreed  about  foreign  affairs — about  Ger- 
many, for  instance  ? "  This,  he  saw,  was  a  more 
difficult  question  to  answer.  But  it  was  important  to 
remember  that  much  of  Bolingbroke's  declamation 
against  the  German  Alliance  and  the  sums  which 
it  had  cost  us  was  written  after  Sir  Robert  Walpole 
had  been  Minister  for  twenty  years,  and  not  before. 
It  is  fair  to  conclude  that  Bolingbroke  would  have 
found  some  way  of  reconciling  the  King's  German  pro- 
clivities with  English  interests,  had  he  been  Minister 
from  the    first.     In    1740    he    only    saw   that  Walpole 


12  TORY    MEMORIES. 

had   failed   to   do   so,  and   that  the  consequences   had 
been  disastrous. 

Thus  we  see  that  when  compelled  to  take  a  prac- 
tical view  of  eighteenth-century  politics  Disraeli  could 
lay  aside  his  ideals,  if  he  ever  secretly  cherished  any, 
and  face  the  situation  as  it  really  was.  We  might 
suppose — and  many  persons  have  supposed — from 
the  language  used  in  *'  Coningsby ''  and  *'  Sybil,'* 
that  when  he  wrote  these  novels  he  really  believed 
that  England's  best  hope  for  the  future  lay  in  the 
restoration  of  the  Royal  prerogative  to  the  point  at 
which  WilHam  III.  left  it.  I  will  not  say  but  what  he 
might  have  thought  as  much  in  the  abstract,  or  even 
that  the  pre-Revolution  monarchy  was  preferable  to 
the  one  that  succeeded  it.  He  certainly  seems  to  have 
agreed  with  Lord  Shelburne  that  a  real  monarchy  was 
preferable  to  a  '^  sham "  one,  as  Shelburne  always 
styled  the  monarchy  of  the  first  two  Georges;  but 
that  he  ever  thought  the  revival  of  Shelburne's  "  real 
royalty''  was  a  practical  possibility  in  the  middle  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  all  I  ever  heard  him  say 
about  the  subject  forbids  me  to  believe. 


CHAPTER    II. 
LORD  BEACONSFIELD  (continued). 

Disraeli's  Views  on  Lord  Derby's  Refusal  to  Form  a  Government — As 
Reformer — A  Blue-book  Mystery — Lord  Palmerston's  Second  Ad- 
ministration— Disraeli's  Appreciation  of  Pluck — In  Isolation — 
Literary  Admirations — As  Journalist — His  Estimate  of  Contem- 
porary Biography — Attitude  towards  the  Church  of  England. 

I  HAVE  said  that  my  first  introduction  to  Mr.  Disraeli 
was  in  1858,  soon  after  the  formation  of  Lord  Derby's 
second  Ministry,  when  Lord  Palmerston  had  just  been 
defeated  on  the  Conspiracy  to  Murder  Bill.  At  the  same 
time,  he  talked  a  good  deal  about  the  Coalition  and 
about  Lord  Derby's  refusal  to  take  office  in  1855.  He 
was  now  in  office,  it  was  true ;  and  that  was  some- 
thing. But  he  was  still  smarting  under  the  disap- 
pointment which  he  experienced  three  years  before. 
He  knew  well  enough  that  the  opportunity  which 
arrived  in  1858  was  not  the  opportunity  which  was  lost 
in  1855.  He  dwelt  on  this  at  some  length,  and  on  more 
occasions  than  one.  At  the  earlier  date  the  party  re- 
tained the  full  strength  which  the  General  Election  of 
1852  had  given  them.  In  1858  it  was  weakened  by  the 
loss  of  at  least  thirty  seats  in  1857.  He  said  that  Lord 
Derby  was  an  essentially  timid  man,  and,  no  doubt, 
he  had  not  the  daring  spirit  of  his  colleague,  who,  as 
the  fifteenth  Earl,  once  told  me,  would  always  go 
'*  double  or  quits.*' 

However,  it  was  clear  to  me  that  Mr.  Disraeli  was 

13 


14  TORY   MEMORIES. 

much  disappointed,  and  he  could  not  help  referring 
to  the  character  of  the  last  Conservative  Ministry  in 
justification  of  his  chagrin.  That  Government  had 
been  overthrown  on  the  question  of  Free  Trade.  Had 
not  this  been  made  the  issue  on  which  the  General  Elec- 
tion of  1852  was  fought,  the  Conservatives,  he  thought, 
would  have  had  a  majority  at  the  polls.  And  if  it  had 
not  been  thrust  prominently  forward  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  the  Government  would  not  have  been  beaten 
on  the  Budget.  But  in  1855  the  controversy  was 
dead  and  buried.  The  Liberals  had  nothing  to 
appeal  to  but  their  own  mismanagement  of  the  war. 
Had  Lord  Derby  taken  office,  and  had  he  met  with 
any  factious  opposition,  an  appeal  to  the  country 
would  infallibly  have  given  him  a  majority.  Every- 
thing  was   in   his   favour. 

Mr.  Disraeli  returned  to  this  view  of  the  subject 
again  and  again.  He  had  recalled,  he  said,  a  great 
many  seceders,  he  had  brought  back  Gladstone,  he 
thought,  at  least  half  way  to  his  old  friends — ''the 
half -regained  Eurydice,'*  as  he  said  Lord  Derby  called 
him ;  and  he  evidently  believed  that,  in  spite  of 
what  had  occurred  on  the  night  of  the  division  (De- 
cember 16,  1852),  Gladstone  would  have  joined  Lord 
Derby  had  the  latter  taken  office  three  years  afterwards 
and  shown  himself  strong  enough  to  keep  it.  It 
appeared  to  me  that  this  was  what  he  thought.  Yet 
it  does  not  tally  with  his  letter  to  Lord  Malmesbury 
of  February,  1855,  in  which  he  says  of  Sir  James  Graham, 
Mr.  Gladstone,  and  Sidney  Herbert,  who  had  just 
resigned,  "  They  first  refused  to  join  Lord  Derby, 
and  stopped  Palmerston,  who  was  ready  to  do  so,  by 
promising  to  take  office  under  him.     They  thus  pre- 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  15 

vented  a  strong  Government  from  being  formed,  and 
having  induced  Lord  Palmerston  to  accept  the  Premier- 
ship on  the  understanding  that  he  would  have  their 
assistance,  they  now  leave  him  in  the  lurch  at  a  moment 
of  great  difficulty  and  danger."  In  the  recently  pub- 
lished Life  of  Lord  Herbert  of  Lea  we  have  a  full 
and  most  interesting  account  of  these  complicated 
negotiations. 

Then,  Mr.  Disraeli  continued,  came  the  unfortunate 
affair  of  the  Arrow,  the  Chinese  War,  and  Lord 
Palmerston's  appeal  to  the  British  Hon,  which  undid 
all  his  work,  and  laid  once  more  in  ruins  the  powerful 
political  party  which  he  had  raised  from  the  dust  and 
rehabilitated  with  so  much  skill,  patience,  and  confi- 
dence. Now,  he  said,  he  had  all  his  work  to  do  over 
again.  Fortune,  however,  was  kind  to  him,  and  soon 
gave  him  another  chance. 

Lord  Palmerston,  at  the  beginning  of  1858,  had 
undertaken  to  bring  in  a  Parliamentary  Reform  Bill. 
When  he  went  out  of  office  Mr.  Bright  took  up  the 
question  and  starred  the  provinces,  delivering  a  series 
of  inflammatory  harangues  in  the  North  of  England 
during  the  autumn  of  that  year,  which  had  the  effect 
which  they  were  intended  to  have,  and  made  it  almost 
impossible  for  the  new  Government  to  shelve  the 
question.  Accordingly,  Mr.  Disraeli  and  Lord  Derby 
came  to  the  conclusion  that  they  would  make  an  honest 
effort  to  deal  with  it,  and  stand  or  fall  by  their  success. 
I  now  began  to  see  a  good  deal  of  Mr.  Disraeli.  He  was 
kind  enough  to  think  I  might  be  of  some  use  to  him  ; 
and  a  monthly  periodical  was  started,  which  was  in- 
tended to  support  the  Government,  and  deal  especially 


i6  TORY   MEMORIES. 

with  the  question  of  Reform.  This  being  so,  Mr.  Dis- 
raeH  promised  to  give  me  full  particulars  of  the  Govern- 
ment plan  before  any  inkling  of  it  had  leaked  out  in 
other  quarters. 

He  was  as  good  as  his  word.  In  1859  I  went  several 
times  to  Grosvenor  Gate,  and  he  dictated  to  me  every 
detail  of  the  Bill  of  that  year,  with  the  reasons  assigned 
for  it.  I  can  see  him  now,  as  he  stood  with  his  back  to 
the  fire  and  his  hands  very  often  on  his  hips,  a  favourite 
attitude  with  him  in  the  House,  and  laid  the  whole  plan 
before  me  with  the  utmost  fulness  and  precision.  The 
two  leading  features  were  the  equalisation  of  the  town 
and  county  franchise,  and  the  restriction  of  the  borough 
freeholder  to  a  single  vote — that  is  to  say,  depriving 
him  of  the  right  of  voting  both  for  town  and  county 
on  the  same  qualification.  There  is  no  occasion  to 
discuss  these  proposals  now.  It  is  more  important  to 
note  that  both  Mr.  Disraeli  and  his  chief  were  con- 
demned by  many  Conservatives  for  touching  reform  at 
all.  Leave  it  alone,  they  said,  and  if  you  are  turned 
out  on  the  question  it  will  be  all  the  better  for  you  here- 
after that  you  have  not  sacrificed  your  consistency. 
Mr.  Disraeli  told  me  that  Lord  Derby  was  just  as 
eager  to  grapple  with  the  question  as  he  was  himself. 
We  thought  it  highly  impolitic,  if  not  impossible,  he 
said,  for  the  Conservative  Party  to  take  up  a  non  pos- 
sumus  attitude  on  a  great  popular  question.  Had 
they  done  so,  he  proceeded,  they  must  have  dwindled 
away  like  the  Jacobites  or  the  Non-jurors ;  and  he 
always  insisted  strongly  on  this  point,  that  parlia- 
mentary reform  being  a  constitutional  question,  the 
Conservatives  had  as  much  right  to  deal  with  it  as 
the  Liberals.     ''  I  was  determined,''  he  said,  "  to  vin- 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  17 

dicate  the  right  of  the  party  to  a  free  hand,  and  not 
to  allow  them  to  be  shut  up  in  a  cage  formed  by  the 
Whigs  and  Radicals  ;  confined  within  a  certain  magic 
circle  which  they  were  not  to  step  out  of  at  the  peril 
of  their  lives."  He  was  fond  of  this  illustration,  and 
he  used  it  more  than  once. 

Neither  the  article  which  I  founded  on  his  notes 
nor  his  own  speeches  in  the  House  could  save  a  Reform 
Bill  which  was  foredoomed  to  failure  from  the  first. 
Lord  John  Russell,  who  considered  that  the  Tories 
were  poaching  on  his  own  preserve,  succeeded  in  throw- 
ing out  the  Bill  on  the  second  reading ;  and  it  is 
probable  that  the  Government  expected  nothing  else. 
It  had  all  the  effect  which  probably  Lord  Derby  in- 
tended, and  caused  the  question  to  be  shelved  for 
another  seven  years.  Now  that  their  affected  zeal  for 
reform  had  restored  the  Whigs  to  power,  the  measure 
of  their  earnestness  was  soon  taken.  After  one  faint 
attempt  to  keep  up  appearances,  the  subject  was 
dropped.  Mr.  Disraeli  summed  up  his  own  view  of 
the  matter  in  the  pithy  remark,  almost  the  last  he 
spoke  to  myself  upon  the  subject,  ''  We  pricked  the 
imposture.*' 

Parhament  was  dissolved  in  April,  1859,  ^^^  though 
the  Conservatives  gained  a  good  many  seats,  they  did 
not  get  a  clear  majority.  When  the  new  Parliament 
met,  a  vote  of  want  of  confidence  was  moved  by  Lord 
Hartington,  to  which  Mr.  Disraeli  replied  immediately 
in  a  speech  which  Lord  Palmerston  pronounced  a  mas- 
terpiece. Had  it  been  possible,  Palmerston  said,  to 
procure  a  verdict  of  not  guilty  for  the  Government, 

Si  Pergama  dextr^, 
Defendi  possent,  etiam  hac  defensa  fuissent. 


i8  TORY   MEMORIES. 

But  the  case  he  had   in  hand  was  too  hopelessly  bad 
for  the  most  consummate  advocate  to  establish. 

Lord  Palmerston  little  knew  how  near  he  came  to 
being  a  false  prophet.  The  vote  of  want  of  confidence 
was  carried  by  a  very  small  majority,  only  thirteen 
in  a  House  of  633,  and  would  not  have  been  carried  at 
all  had  the  papers  relating  to  the  Franco-Austrian 
War  been  laid  on  the  table  of  the  House  in  time  for 
members  to  read  them  before  the  division  was  taken. 
Mr.  Delane  believed  that  in  that  case  the  Opposition 
would  have  failed,  and  Lord  Clarendon  and  Lord 
Malmesbury  knew  it.  We  are  not  concerned  to  inquire 
how  long  the  Government  could  have  held  their  ground 
afterwards  had  they  weathered  the  first  attack.  The 
interesting  question,  and  the  one  that  specially  con- 
cerns Mr.  Disraeli,  is  why  the  papers  were  not  produced. 
I  ventured  to  ask  Mr.  Disraeli  a  few  days  afterwards 
what  was  the  reason  of  it ;  why  he  had  not  laid  these 
papers  on  the  table.  I  remember  he  turned  upon 
me  rather  sharply,  the  only  time  I  ever  saw  him 
offended  at  any  question  I  asked  him.  *'  Why,  how 
could  I  produce  them  when  they  were  not  printed  ?  '* 
I  do  not  pretend  to  reconcile  this  statement  with  Lord 
Malmesbury's,  who  says  that  Mr.  Disraeli  would  not 
allow  him  to  produce  the  Blue  Book.  This,  if  the  book 
was  producible,  seems  a  strange  story.  In  Lord 
Malmesbury *s  Diary  we  find  it  written  that  **  Clarendon 
and  all  the  Whigs,  and  our  men,  say  that  it  would 
have  saved  us  if  it  had  come  out.'*  This  testimony  to 
its  value  disposes  of  the  ingenious  suggestion  that  Mr. 
Disraeli  kept  back  the  papers  not  because  he  had  not 
read  them,  but  because  he  had.  But  it  still  remains 
to  be  asked  why  Lord  Derby,  who  must  have  been 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  19 

acquainted  with  the  contents  of  the  Blue  Book,  did 
not  insist  on  its  being  produced. 

Lord  Malmesbury  can  only  say  that  Lord  Derby  was 
ill  of  the  gout,  and  tired  of  office,  and  glad  of  any 
excuse  for  getting  out  of  it.  But  he  would  hardly  have 
treated  his  party  and  his  colleagues  so  badly  as  to 
forbid  publication  of  a  document  which  would  have 
saved  them  from  defeat,  and  have  fully  justified  the 
foreign  policy  for  which  he  himself  was,  of  course, 
responsible,  merely  because  he  was  himself  tired  of 
fighting  ;  that  was  not  his  nature.  Mr.  Disraeli's  curt 
reply  to  myself  can  offer  no  solution.  Everything 
that  Lord  Malmesbury  says  points  to  the  belief  that 
the  Blue  Book  was  in  a  sufficiently  forward  state  to 
have  been  produced  much  sooner  than  it  was.  What 
Mr.  Disraeli  told  me  simply  negatives  this  assumption. 
I  could  see  that  he  was  a  little  angry  at  being  asked 
about  it.  And,  of  course,  after  such  a  distinct  and 
positive  assertion  I  could  pursue  the  subject  no  further. 
There  must,  one  would  think,  be  some  explanation  in 
the  background.  I  never  heard  Mr.  Disraeli  say 
another  word  about   it. 

The  party,  however,  continued  to  be  much  dis- 
satisfied. They  were  not  tired  of  office,  if  Lord  Derby 
was  ;  and,  besides  that,  they  believed  that  their  leader 
in  the  House  of  Commons,  whom  they  had  hitherto  re- 
garded as  a  tactician  of  the  first  class,  had  been  guilty 
of  a  great  blunder,  which,  for  a  time,  lowered  their 
confidence  in  him.  I  think  Mr.  Disraeli  felt  this.  He 
might  have  made  a  few  mistakes,  but  when  he  reflected 
on  what  he  had  done  for  the  party,  when  he  compared 
it  as  it  was  in  1849  with  what  it  had  become  in  1859, 
he  might  well  have  expected  that  worse  blunders  would 


20  TORY    MEMORIES. 

be  overlooked.  He  knew  better  than  the  rank  and  file 
of  the  party,  at  all  events,  what  measures  had  been 
taken  to  secure  the  defeat  of  the  Conservatives.  He 
would  often  dwell  on  the  adroitness  with  which  Lord 
Palmerston  had  turned  his  defeat  on  the  Orsini  case  to 
his  own  great  advantage.  He  seemed  to  admire  him 
for  it,  as  we  sometimes  admire  the  boldness  and  dex- 
terity of  some  great  criminal.  He  always  assured  me, 
as  I  continued  to  write  for  the  party,  though  not  in 
the  Press,  that  a  secret  understanding  had  been  arrived 
at  between  Palmerston  and  Louis  Napoleon  at  Com- 
piegne,  by  which  the  latter  undertook  so  to  time  the 
outbreak  of  the  war  with  Austria  as  just  to  fall  in  with 
the  General  Election  in  England ;  Lord  Palmerston  well 
knowing  what  a  useful  weapon  it  would  place  in  the 
hands  of  the  Opposition.  That  the  Government  had 
failed  to  prevent  war,  that  they  had  greatly  provoked 
it  by  their  support  of  Austria,  and  so  forth,  were  as- 
sertions which  told  forcibly  at  the  moment  against 
Lord  Derby.  One  story  is  good  until  another  is  told. 
Palmerston  and  his  friend  in  Paris  outmanoeuvred 
Lord  Derby  and  Disraeli.  The  result  lay  upon  the 
surface.  But  time  has  long  ago  done  justice  to  all 
the  actors  in  this  now  half-forgotten  drama. 

In  those  days  Mr.  Disraeli  would  sometimes  talk 
over  the  position  of  Mr.  Gladstone.  He  never  spoke 
of  him  either  then  or  afterwards  with  any  bitterness. 
In  1858  it  is  known  that  he  addressed  a  pressing  invita- 
tion to  Mr.  Gladstone  to  join  Lord  Derby's  Cabinet. 
The  letter,  dated  May  28th,  with  Mr.  Gladstone's 
answer,  is  given  at  full  length  in  Mr.  Morley's  Life. 
It  is  obvious  from  this  letter  that  Mr.  Gladstone  was 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  21 

still  desirous  of  posing  as  a  Conservative,  and  it  was  not, 
I  fancy,  till  he  became  Leader  of  the  House  under  Earl 
Russell  and  aUied  himself  closely  with  Mr.  John  Bright 
that  all  hope  of  reunion  with  him  was  finally  abandoned. 
Mr.  Gladstone  himself,  in  spite  of  occasional  skirmishes 
in  ParHament,  continued  to  be  on  friendly  terms  with 
Disraeli  in  private  life.  So,  at  least,  I  was  told  by 
Lady  Beaconsfield,  who  said  that  after  any  sharp  en- 
counter in  the  House  of  Commons  Mr.  Gladstone  would 
frequently  come  round  to  Grosvenor  Gate  just  to  show 
that  he  ''  bore  no  maHce.''  But,  in  spite  of  what  I  have 
just  said,  I  can  scarcely  beheve  that  Mr.  Disraeli  him- 
self had  any  real  behef  in  the  possibihty  of  regaining 
Mr.  Gladstone.  I  do  not  think  any  pohtical  differ- 
ence would  have  prevented  it.  In  fact,  at  that  moment 
I  doubt  if  there  was  any.  But  Mr.  DisraeU  took 
intense  interest  in  the  ''  management ''  of  the  Conserva- 
tive Party.  He  often  referred  to  his  own  success  as 
a  party  leader,  and  I  have  known  him  contrast  his 
own  reconstruction  of  the  party  after  1846  with  Peel's 
reconstruction  of  it  after  1832,  a  comparison  which  he 
evidently  thought  much  in  his  own  favour. 

Now,  if  Mr.  Gladstone  had  consented  to  sit  on  the 
Treasury  bench  alongside  of  Mr.  DisraeU,  though  the 
latter  might  have  been  the  nominal  leader,  yet  much 
of  the  authority  attaching  to  that  position  must 
necessarily  have  been  transferred  to  his  colleague.  In 
the  Conservative  party  in  1858  there  were  still  many 
members  who  had  once  looked  up  to  Gladstone  as  the 
great  Tory  and  High  Church  statesman.  They  would 
have  been  apt  always  to  take  their  cue  from  him  and 
look  to  him  for  the  word  of  command.  That  this  would 
have  been  gall  and  wormwood  to  Mr.  DisraeU  it  is  need- 


22  TORY   MEMORIES. 

less  to  say ;  and  that  he  foresaw  the  situation  is  clear 
from  a  passage  in  the  letter  referred  to.  He  was  fond 
of  talking  of  the  evils  of  a  divided  leadership.  This 
had  been  one  of  his  chief  topics  against  the  Aberdeen 
Ministry,  to  which  he  often  referred  in  his  conversa- 
tions with  myself,  and  I  am  sure  he  was  often  thinking 
that  the  union  of  himself  and  Mr.  Gladstone  in  the 
same  Cabinet  would,  mutatis  mutandis^  have  been 
Palmerston  and  Aberdeen  over  again. 

After  the  General  Election  of  1859  ^^^  ^^e  forma- 
tion of  Lord  Palmerston's  second  Administration,  the 
relations  between  Mr.  Disraeli  and  his  party  continued 
to  be  rather  strained.  There  was  also  a  strong  feel- 
ing in  favour  of  not  displacing  Lord  Palmerston,  which 
the  Opposition  could  have  done  at  any  moment.  While 
he  was  in  office  Conservatism  was  supported  on  both 
sides  of  the  House.  Had  he  been  turned  out  he  could 
at  once  have  fraternised  with  the  Radicals.  This 
kind  of  arrangement,  however,  was  not  much  to  Mr. 
Disraeli's  taste.  He  was  no  laisser-faire  politician. 
And  I  think,  from  what  he  said  to  me  on  various  occa- 
sions, though  not  in  so  many  words,  namely,  that 
Tory  principles  should  be  represented  by  Tory  states- 
men, he  felt  that  one  who  had  worked  so  hard  for  the 
party  as  he  had  done  himself  had  a  right  to  expect 
that,  when  an  opportunity  offered  of  rewarding  his 
services,  it  should  not  be  thrown  away.  Perhaps 
many  of  his  followers,  and  possibly  even  Lord  Derby, 
might  not  be  disposed  to  take  the  same  view  of  the 
question.  But  it  was  natural  that  Mr.  Disraeli  should 
take  it ;  and  twice,  as  I  shall  have  occasion  to 
point   out,  he   was   doomed   to   disappointment,   either 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  23 

through  the  lukewarmness  or  indiscretion  of  leading 
colleagues. 

He  sometimes  referred  to  the  famous  scene  in  the 
House  of  Commons  when  the  *'  favourite  bolted '' — in 
other  words,  when  Mr.  Walpole,  frightened  by  Lord 
Palmerston's  threat  of  resignation,  withdrew  a  resolu- 
tion which  was  almost  certain  to  have  involved  the 
defeat  of  the  Government.  But  he  never  spoke  with 
any  bitterness  of  it.  He  admired  men  Uke  Lord  John 
Russell,  with  pluck  enough  for  twenty  men,  or  like 
Lord  Lyndhurst,  who  could  have  organised  a  coup 
d'etat.  He  was  fond  of  talking  about  ''  great  men  and 
great  times  '*  without  any  express  reference  to  his 
contemporaries,  but  rather  to  indulge  his  humour.  I 
have  heard  him  speak  highly  of  Atterbury,  and  his 
offer  to  proclaim  James  HL  in  his  lawn  sleeves.  This 
was  the  kind  of  daring,  the  nothing-venture-nothing- 
have  principle,  which  appealed  to  him  most  strongly  ; 
and  I  dare  say  he  may  on  one  or  two  occasions 
have  repeated  to  himself  Atterbury's  well-known  ex- 
clamation, *'  Here  is  the  finest  cause  in  Europe  lost  for 
want  of  spirit." 

After  the  above  fiasco  Disraeli  was  for  a  time,  per- 
haps, rather  isolated  from  the  bulk  of  his  party.  He 
sat  on  the  front  Opposition  bench  with  the  same  im- 
perturbable countenance  which  he  always  wore,  rarely 
speaking  to  anyone,  and  apparently  indifferent  to  any 
taunts  which  might  be  thrown  at  him  from  the  other 
side.  Yet  I  have  been  told — I  think  it  was  by  Mr. 
OHphant — that  this  indifference  was  more  apparent 
than  real ;  and  that  when  he  was  really  stung,  his 
countenance  darkened  and  assumed  a  swarthy  hue, 
which   betrayed    his    real    feelings.     Mr.    Oliphant    sat 


24  TORY   MEMORIES. 

opposite  to  him  in  the  House  of  Commons,  and  had 
every  opportunity  of  watching  him.  But  I  never 
heard  this  from  anybody  else,  and  I  do  not  ask  my 
readers  to  beHeve  it  imphcitly.  Lord  Malmesbury 
says  that  the  speech  on  Walpole's  withdrawal  was 
"  furious/'  and  gave  great  offence  to  the  party.  I  can 
scarcely  credit  that.  There  is  nothing  in  the  speech 
which  deserves  such  an  epithet,  though  the  speaker  did 
not  affect  to  disguise  his  disappointment  and  vexation. 

About  this  time  I  often  had  conversations  with  him 
on  general  subjects.  He  admired  the  Augustan  litera- 
ture more  than,  I  think,  the  Victorian.  He  admired 
in  literature  what  he  shone  in  himself — epigram,  irony, 
the  lofty  sneer,  the  cool  sarcasm,  the  rapier-like  retort. 

It  is  said  that  those  members  of  the  Tory  party 
who  after  1859  were  most  dissatisfied  with  his 
leadership  were  deterred  from  any  attempt  to  super- 
sede him  by  the  consciousness  of  what  they  would 
have  to  expect,  if  he  took  a  seat  below  the  gang- 
way. Of  literary  style  he  would  probably  have  taken 
the  *'  Patriot  King ''  for  a  model.  Of  Pope  he 
was  a  warm  admirer,  and  the  author  of  ''  The 
Dunciad "  was  one  of  the  few  English  poets  whom 
he  ever  quoted.  Talking  of  Scott,  he  said  he  thought 
"  Redgauntlet  "  was  one  of  his  finest  creations,  if  not 
the  very  finest.  Of  contemporary  writers  I  do  not 
recollect  hearing  him  say  much.  He  asked  me  if  I  did 
not  think  that  both  Dickens  and  Thackeray  had  written 
themselves  out,  and  as  the  question  was  asked  just  after 
the  publication  of  ''  Lovel  the  Widower  '*  and  ''  Denis 
Duval,*'  while  Dickens  had  come  down  to  '*  Great 
Expectations  "  and  "  Our  Mutual  Friend,'*  I  had  no 
difficulty  in  giving  an  affirmative  answer. 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  25 

He  often  praised  the  old  Morning  Chronicle,  as  it 
was  edited  by  Black  and  Perry,  as,  with  one  exception, 
our  best  newspaper  style.  The  exception  was  Cobbett, 
whom  he  thoroughly  appreciated.  He  thought  him 
superior  to  Junius,  superior  to  Fonblanque,  and  superior 
to  the  best  articles  in  the  newly-started  Saturday  Review. 
Indeed,  he  availed  himself  very  largely  of  Cobbett's 
**  History  of  the  Protestant  Reformation,'*  and  in 
''  Sybil ''  he  puts  into  Walter  Gerard's  mouth 
Cobbett's  very  words  and  arguments.  But  it  was,  of 
course,  of  the  Political  Register  that  Mr.  Disraeli  was 
thinking  when  he  spoke  of  Cobbett  as  the  first  jour- 
nalist of  the  century,  and  it  would  certainly  be  difficult 
to  name  anything  superior  to  the  article  which  ap- 
peared in  the  Register  of  July  30th,  1803,  entitled, 
*'  Important  Considerations  for  the  People  of  the 
Kingdom,'*  pointing  out  to  them  the  certain  conse- 
quences of  a  French  invasion.  Of  Mr.  Disraeli's  own 
talents  as  a  leading-article  writer,  I  only  know  of  one 
genuine  specimen,  and  that  is  the  first  leader  in  the  first 
number  of  the  Press,  which  came  out  early  in  1853. 
The  style  is  his  own.  He  did  not  imitate  either  Boling- 
broke  or  Cobbett,  or  any  other  writer  whom  he  ad- 
mired. 

I  have  already  stated  that  the  Press  passed  out 
of  his  hands  in  1858.  But  early  in  the  sixties  he  was 
beginning  to  think  of  founding  another  paper  to  supply 
its  place.  The  Conservative  Party  missed  a  chance  here. 
The  Pall  Mall  Gazette  had  not  yet  made  its  appearance. 
There  was  a  vacant  space  to  be  filled,  and  it  might  just 
as  well  have  been  filled  by  a  Conservative  evening  paper 
as  by  a  Liberal.  Indeed,  one  very  clever  writer  who 
afterwards    served    Mr.    Greenwood    so    effectively  on 


26  TORY    MEMORIES. 

the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  had  just  begun  his  career  as  a 
Conservative  journahst,  and  articles  which  deUghted  the 
pubhc  during  the  early  seventies  might  just  as  well 
have  come  out  of  a  Conservative  office.  However,  by 
that  time  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  itself  was  really,  if  not 
nominally,  a  Conservative  organ,  and  probably  did 
more  to  write  down  Mr.  Gladstone's  first  Administra- 
tion than  any  other  journal  of  the  day. 

But  to  return  to  Mr.  Disraeli.  I  have  said  that  his 
ideas  of  journalism  seemed  rather  old-fashioned,  and  I 
do  not  think  it  would  ever  have  occurred  to  him  to  found 
a  paper  like  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  or  the  Saturday  Review. 
He  often  talked  to  me  about  it ;  proposed  that  I  should 
be  the  editor,  and  even  asked  me  what  salary  I  should 
expect.  I  remember  that  when  I  threw  out  as  a  feeler 
£500  a  year,  he  corrected  me,  and  said,  ''  Yes,  £10 
a  week.''  I  mention  this  because  it  shows  that  he  was 
thinking  of  a  time  when  journalists,  like  actors,  reckoned 
their  salaries  by  the  week.  They  may  do  so,  perhaps, 
to  some  extent  still.  But  in  the  middle  of  the  last 
century  the  practice  was  general,  and  Mr.  Disraeli's 
thoughts  evidently  reverted  to  the  system  which  was  in 
existence  when  the  Press  was  founded.  However,  the 
project  was  dropped.  Many  of  the  Conservative 
leaders  had  burned  their  fingers  in  the  Press,  and 
declined  to  make  another  experiment.  And  even  if 
they  had  not,  and  if  the  plan  had  been  carried  out, 
though  I  should  have  told  Mr.  Disraeli  just  what  I  have 
said  here,  I  do  not  suppose  for  a  moment  my  advice 
would  have  been  taken. 

I  remember  about  this  time  having  a  characteristic 
note  from  him  which  may  be  of  some  interest  in  this 
age  of  biography,  as  our  own  may  well  be  called.     I 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  27 

was  asked — I  really  forget  by  what  publisher — to  write 
a  short  Life  of  him  ;  and  I  wrote  to  enquire  whether 
he  would  like  to  give  me  any  particulars.  His 
answer  was  as  follows,  coupled  with  some  very  kind 
expressions  of  regard  for  myself  which,  however  un- 
deserved, serve  to  illustrate  the  writer's  character  and 
his  loyalty  to  those  who  had  endeavoured  in  any 
way  to  serve  him : — 

HUGHENDEN, 

Nov.  25,  i860. 
My  dear  Sir, — I  am  not  an  admirer  of  contemporary  biography, 
and  I  dislike  to  be  the  subject  of  it.     When  I  pass  through  town, 
which  will  be  in  the  course  of  next  month,  I  will,  however,  see  you 
if  you  wish  it. 

I  have  always  been  desirous  that  a  gentleman  of  your  talents, 
acquirements,  and  character  should  have  the  opportunity  of  bring- 
ing them  to  bear  on  public  opinion  in  a  manner  advantageous  to  the 
country  and  beneficial  to  himself.  But  no  occasion  has  yet  offered 
itself  to  me  by  which  I  could  satisfactorily  accomplish  this  end. 
You  are,  however,  fortunately  yet  young,  and  I  hope  to  see  you 
succeed  in  life.  Believe  me. 

Very  truly  yours, 

Disraeli. 

But  his  dislike  of  contemporary  biography  did  not 
prevent  him  from  reading  and  revising  any  such  short 
notices  of  himself  as  might  appear  in  periodicals. 

And  perhaps  this  is  the  best  place  to  introduce 
what  I  remember  personally  of  his  attitude  at  this 
time  towards  the  Church  of  England — that  is,  from 
i860  to  1868.  It  was  during  this  period  that  he  delivered 
several  very  eloquent  speeches  on  the  Church  of  England, 
which  were  afterwards  collected  and  published  separately 
under  the  title  of  "  Church  and  Queen.'*  The  first  of 
them  was  delivered  in  November,  1861,  at  the  annual 
meeting  of  the  Oxford  diocesan  societies,  and  in  it  we 
find  the  following  allusion  to  what  were  known  as  the 


28  TORY    MEMORIES. 

*'  Palmerstonian  Bishops."  "  I  know/'  said  Mr.  Dis- 
raeli, ''  that  recent  appointments  to  high  places  in 
the  Church,  and  other  public  circumstances,  in  their 
opinion  equally  opposed  to  the  spread  and  spirit  of  sound 
Church  principles,  have  made  some  look  without  any 
enthusiasm  on  the  connection  between  Church  and 
State,  and  even  contemplate  without  alarm  the  possible 
disruption  of  that  union.  It  is  impossible  to  speak  of 
those  who  hold  these  opinions  without  respect,  and  I 
would  say  even  affection,  for  we  all  of  us  to  a  great 
degree  must  share  in  the  sentiments  of  those  who 
entertain  these  opinions,  though  we  may  not  be  able 
to   sanction   their   practical   conclusions.'' 

Some  time  afterwards,  when  I  wrote  in  a  magazine  : 
*'  The  instincts  of  race  are  ineradicable,  and  while 
those  simple  forms  of  government  which  have  always 
prevailed  in  Asia  still  retain  their  charm  for  men  of 
Mr.  Disraeli's  blood,  so  it  is  equally  intelligible  that 
his  instincts  and  traditions  and  imagination  should 
make  him  respect  a  great  national  hierarchy  founded 
on  great  mysteries  and  storied  with  a  solemn  grandeur, 
like  its  own  old  abbeys  and  cathedrals,"  he  sent  word 
to  me  to  say  how  much  pleased  he  was  with  this  ex- 
pression of  his  views. 

All  this  is  quite  consistent  with  what  he  said  to 
me  after  the  General  Election  of  1865,  when  he  was 
again  greatly  disappointed.  During  the  whole  of  Lord 
Palmerston's  Administration  he  said  he  had  been  labour- 
ing assiduously  to  conciliate  the  Roman  Catholic  party, 
who  were  naturally  much  displeased  with  the  foreign 
policy  of  the  Government.  He  had  met,  he  said,  with 
considerable  success,  and  he  mentioned  to  me  several 
Lancashire   families   on   whose   vote   and   influence   he 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  29 

believed  he  could  depend.  A  careless,  thoughtless 
speech  of  Lord  Derby*s  gave  deep  offence  to  the  Roman 
Catholics,  and  shattered  all  his  hopes.  Here  he  did 
speak  with  considerable  warmth,  as  he  sat  up  in  his 
armchair  and  *'  showed  how  fields  were  won,'*  and, 
alas  !  how  they  were  lost.  The  Parliament  of  1865, 
however,  was  a  Palmerstonian  Parliament,  and  con- 
tained a  numerous  and  influential  section  of  so-called 
Liberals  who  looked  with  great  dislike  on  the  union 
between  Gladstone  and  Bright  in  Lord  Russell's 
Cabinet. 

I  should  add  that  though  Mr.  Disraeli  was,  in  my 
opinion,  sometimes  at  fault  as  to  the  historical  position 
of  the  Church  of  England,  his  speech  at  High  Wycombe 
in  October,  1862,  is  one  of  the  best  accounts  of  what 
the  country  gains  by  a  National  Church,  and  of  what 
we  should  lose  by  disestablishing  it,  which  I  have  ever 
met  with. 


CHAPTER    III. 

LORD  BEACONSFIELD  (continued). 

A  Visit  to  Hughenden — Disraeli's  Love  of  Trees — A  Walk  with  Mrs. 
Disraeli — A  Drive  with  Disraeli — His  Views  on  the  Origin  of  the 
Civil  War — After-dinner  Talk — A  Sally  which  made  one  of  the 
Guests  look  Grave. 

It  was  early  in  October,  1864,  that  I  first  received  an 
invitation  to  Hughenden.  Mr.  DisraeH  had  very  kindly 
asked  rae  to  come  when  he  had  some  people  staying 
in  the  house  whom  he  thought  I  might  like  to  meet ; 
among  them,  I  remember,  was  the  Duchess  of  Somerset, 
the  Queen  of  Love  and  Beauty  at  the  Eglinton  Tour- 
nament ;  but,  unfortunately,  I  could  not  go  on  the 
day  fixed,  and  thus  just  missed  meeting  her  Grace,  who 
had  left  the  day  before  I  got  there. 

I  remember  the  journey  well — I  started  from  Oxford, 
and  drove  in  a  dogcart  to  Thame,  where  I  caught  a 
train  to  High  Wycombe.  Here  I  got  a  fly  to  take  me 
up  to  Hughenden.  The  driver  was  drunk,  and 
several  times  nearly  upset  me.  But  it  was  a  pitch 
dark  night,  and  he  may  not  have  been  so  drunk  as  he 
looked.  Mr.  Disraeli,  when  he  heard  the  story,  con- 
gratulated me  on  having  had  an  adventure.  I  was  too 
late  for  dinner,  but  that  did  not  signify,  as  I  had  prac- 
tically dined  at  Oxford  ;  and  after  I  had  dressed  I  was 
shown  into  the  drawing-room,  where  I  found  Mrs. 
Disraeli  by  herself,  whom  I  now  saw  for  the  first  time. 
We  were  soon  joined  by  her  husband — and  you  do  not 

30 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  31 

see  such  a  couple  as  they  made  every  day  in  the  week. 
The  contrast  was  striking.  It  is  enough  to  say  that  I 
Hked  Mrs.  DisraeH  very  much.  She  was  very  good- 
natured  ;  had  nothing  of  the  fine  lady  about  her  ;  and 
I  daresay  frequently  astonished  those  who  had  much 
of  it.  Later  on  I  was  regaled  with  sandwiches  and 
sherry,  Mr.  Disraeli  assuring  me  that  Hughenden  was 
famous  for  its  sandwiches.  I  do  not  know  how  they 
were  made,  but  I  remember  I  thought  they  were  par- 
ticularly good — as  good,  that  is,  as  it  is  in  the  nature 
of  a  sandwich  to  be.  The  only  two  guests  remaining 
in  the  house  when  I  got  there  were  Mr.  Lygon, 
afterwards  Lord  Beauchamp,  and  a  Buckinghamshire 
country  gentleman,  whose  name  I  have  forgotten, 
but  who,  like  Dandie  Dinmont,  as  described  by 
Dominie  Sampson,  was  learned  *'  in  that  which  apper- 
taineth  unto  flocks  and  herds,'*  and  was  possessed  of 
a  fine  herd  of  Alderneys,  which  occupied  a  large  share 
of  our  attention  before  we  went  to  bed.  No  smoking- 
room  was  mentioned,  and  we  retired  early. 

When  I  looked  out  of  my  window  the  next  morning 
I  saw  Mr.  Disraeli  walking  up  and  down  between  his 
two  friends  on  the  terrace  which  ran  along  the  front 
of  the  house,  and  afforded  a  pretty  view  of  the  little 
valley  of  the  Wye,  from  which  Wycombe  takes  its  name, 
and  the  woods  and  hills  which  encircle  it.  The  other 
side  of  the  house  looked  out  upon  the  lawn.  Mr.  Dis- 
raeli's morning  costume  was  a  black  velvet  shooting 
coat — the  very  same,  perhaps,  which  he  wore  when  he 
made  his  famous  speech  at  the  Oxford  Diocesan  Con- 
ference, as  described  by  Mr.  Froude ;  a  tall,  sugar- 
loafed  hat,  with,  if  I  remember  right,  some  kind  of 
feather  attached  to  it ;    and  a  dark  green  tie,  a  colour 


32  TORY    MEMORIES. 

to  which  he  was  always  partial.  I  joined  them  on  the 
terrace  as  soon  as  I  could,  and  then  Mr.  Disraeli  told 
me  a  great  deal  about  the  house  and  the  estate,  and  the 
Norris  family  who  had  formerly  possessed  it,  and  was 
interested  in  hearing  that  many  years  ago  an  uncle  of 
my  own  had  once  had  thoughts  of  buying  it.  He  for- 
got to  add  that  the  Manor  of  Hughenden  belonged  to 
the  Priory  of  Kenilworth,  and  that  he  himself  was 
one  of  those  *'  gentle  proprietors  of  abbey  lands  *' 
whom  he  denounced  in  "  Sybil." 

Of  course,  he  knew  the  whole  neighbourhood 
thoroughly,  and  seemed  to  take  pleasure  in  talking 
about  it.  He  was  fond  of  Buckinghamshire,  its  woods 
and  waters,  for  a  great  love  of  trees  was  one  of  his 
marked  characteristics;  and  here,  perhaps,  a  highly 
imaginative  person  fond  of  far-fetched  resemblances 
might  be  reminded  of  the  political  differences  between 
Mr.  Disraeli  and  Mr.  Gladstone,  the  one  a  great  con- 
servator of  trees,  the  other  a  great  destroyer.  Mr. 
Disraeli  was  proud,  too,  of  the  place  which  Buckingham- 
shire filled  in  history,  and  of  the  continuity  of  its 
character  down  to  the  present  time.  When  asked 
once  where  were  the  four  thousand  Buckinghamshire 
freeholders  who  followed  John  Hampden,  '*  Why, 
where  you  would  expect  to  find  them,**  was  the  answer, 
"  in  Buckinghamshire,  to  be  sure.**  After  breakfast, 
he  took  me  into  his  library,  and  it  was  a  pleasure  to 
see  him  among  his  books.  He  pointed  out  several 
scarce  volumes,  touching  each  of  them  as  he  spoke 
with  a  slender  forefinger,  indicative  both  of  race  and 
of  character.  He  was  a  scholar,  his  favourite  classics 
being  Sophocles  and  Horace.  But  he  made  little  parade 
of   either   his   scholarship   or   his   Uterature ;    and   his 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  33 

conversation  did  not  often  turn  on  books,  either  ancient 
or  modern. 

On  quitting  the  Hbrary,  he  retired  to  his  own  den 
— a  small  room  upstairs,  which  I  was  shown  on  a  sub- 
sequent visit  to  Hughenden  after  Mr.  Disraeli's  death — 
and  I  was  left  in  charge  of  Mrs.  Disraeli,  with  whom  I 
walked  round  the  garden,  and  was  introduced  to  the 
peacocks,  the  cedar  brought  direct  from  Lebanon,  and 
some    other    plants    or    trees    which    came    from   the 
Far   East.     Then   we   set    out   for   a    ramble   through 
the  woods,  my  hostess  being  attired  in  a  short  skirt, 
with  stout  gaiters — a  costume  which  has  since   become 
comparatively  common   among   ladies,  but  was  new  to 
me  at  the  time.     In  the  month  of  October  the  woods 
are  apt  to  be  wet,  and,  as  it  was  a  damp   morning,  I 
rather  envied  her.     But  her  conversation  would    have 
made  amends  had  I  got  twice  as  wet  as  I  did.      *'  Namque 
canehat   uti^     For  she  told   of   her   first   acquaintance 
with  '*  Dizzy,'*  as  she  always  called  him ;    of  the  sums 
she  had    spent  on  electioneering  down  to  that  date — 
I  think  she  said  a  hundred  thousand  pounds — and  that 
she  was  well  rewarded  by  the  devotion  of   so  brilliant 
a  husband.     She  spoke  of  his    position  as  a  country 
gentleman   and   his   popularity   with   the   farmers    and 
peasantry.     He  was  no  sportsman,  she    said,  and  kept 
neither  hunters  nor  pointers — I  believe    a  pair  of  car- 
riage horses  were  the  whole  of  his  stud.     The  tenants 
supplied  him  with  game  as  he    required  it,  and  that 
much-maligned  character,   the   gamekeeper,   was  never 
seen  on  the  estate.     Then  she  showed  me  the  walks 
which  had  been  cut  through  the  woods,  to  each  of  which 
some  fanciful  name  was  given.      One  was  Italy  ;  another, 
I  think — but  of   this  I  am  not  sure — was  named  after 

D 


34  TORY    MEMORIES. 

some  Spanish  province.  Then  there  was  ''  The  Lovers' 
Walk/*  and  all,  as  I  understood,  were  planned  by  Mrs. 
Disraeli  herself,  with  the  approval  and  sympathy  of 
the  statesman.  She  spoke  of  his  favourite  flowers 
and  favourite  trees,  his  love  of  birds,  and  of  the  garden 
songsters  in  particular — the  thrush,  the  black-cap,  the 
goldfinch,  and  the  whole  tribe  of  warblers.  She  showed 
me,  in  fact,  a  side  of  his  character  but  little  understood 
by  the  world  in  general  at  that  time,  though  since  then 
it  has  been  better  appreciated,  and,  coming  fresh  from 
the  lips  of  so  clever  a  woman  as  his  wife,  it  is  easy  to 
understand  the  deep  impression  which  it  made  on  me. 
She  gave  me  also  anecdotes  and  illustrations  of  his 
great  good  nature,  his  kindness  to  unfriended  talent, 
his  fidelity  to  his  friends  and  magnanimous  contempt 
for  his  enemies. 

My  hostess  brought  me  back  to  luncheon  about  the 
usual  hour,  and  after  that  meal  the  carriage  came  round 
to  the  door,  and  Mr.  Disraeli  took  his  two  other  guests 
and  myself  for  a  drive  round  the  neighbourhood.  It  is 
full  of  historic  memories,  and  it  is  needless  to  say  that 
our  host  was  steeped  in  them.  It  was  good  to  be  with 
the  great  satirist  of  the  *'  Venetians  ''  on  this,  to  him, 
classic  ground.  It  was  the  home  of  his  childhood,  and 
here  he  imbibed  ideas  which  never  afterwards  deserted 
him.  His  father,  Isaac  Disraeli,  was  Uving  at  Braden- 
ham,  only  a  few  miles  distant,  when  he  was  writing  his 
life  of  Charles  I.,  and  ransacked  the  whole  district  for 
facts  or  traditions  relating  to  the  Rebellion  and  the 
families  concerned  in  it.  But  all  family  papers  belong- 
ing to  that  period,  said  our  host,  were  destroyed  at 
the  Restoration.  ''The  conspiracy  was  hatched  in 
these  hills/'  he  said,  and  whatever  evidence  of  it  still 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  35 

existed  in  the  bosom  of  the  Chilterns  was  carefully 
removed  when  the  Stuarts  reappeared  upon  the  scene/' 
Our  drive  took  us  through  a  beautiful  country,  through 
the  lovely  beech  woods  from  which  Buckinghamshire 
derives  its  name,  till  at  last  we  came  to  a  spot  where 
the  hills  slope  down  into  a  little  valley,  called  Velvet 
Lawns,  the  slope  being  covered  with  natural  boxwood, 
said  to  be  indigenous  to  only  one  other  county  in  England 
besides  Buckinghamshire.  Velvet  Lawns,  he  said,  at 
one  time  was  a  favourite  place  for  picnics,  and  even 
parties  came  down  from  London  to  hold  their  revels  on 
its  turf.  But  they  behaved  so  badly  that  leave  had 
to  be  withdrawn.  I  remember  staring  at  Mr.  Disraeli, 
and  trying  to  imagine  him  at  a  picnic. 

Mr.  Disraeli  talked  a  good  deal  about  the  Civil 
War,  and  had  evidently  persuaded  himself  that  the 
Chiltern  Hills  were  the  cradle  of  an  aristocratic  con- 
spiracy, intended  by  the  authors  to  regain  for  their 
own  order  the  power  which  they  had  wielded  under 
the  Plant agenets.  Charles  L's  mistakes  gave  them 
the  opportunity  they  wanted.  They  were  the  excuse 
for  the  Rebellion,  but  not  the  cause  of  it.  This  already 
existed.  Such  was  the  general  tenour  of  his  conversa- 
tion on  this  particular  subject,  to  which  he  had  given 
deep  and  serious  attention  independently  of  the  informa- 
tion for  which  he  was  indebted  to  his  father.  It  was 
impossible  to  doubt,  as  you  listened  to  his  voice  and 
marked  the  play  of  his  features,  that  he  was  perfectly 
sincere  in  this  belief.  We  may  take  different  views 
of  the  policy  of  the  Parliamentary  party,  and  of  the 
results  of  its  ultimate  victory  in  1688,  without  doubt- 
ing that  Mr.  Disraeli's  theory  of  its  origin  came  very 
near    the    truth.     This    was    a    memorable    afternoon, 


36  TORY    MEMORIES. 

and  I  remember  what  struck  me  at  the  time  was  that 
Mr.  DisraeH,  in  his  sugar-loaf  hat  and  black  cloak  which 
he  wore  in  the  carriage,  resembled  anything  but  a 
Cavalier. 

If  I  remember  rightly,  we  assembled  before  dinner 
in  the  library,  and  when  dinner  was  announced  Mr. 
Disraeli  led  out  his  wife  and  left  the  three  of  us  to 
follow.  The  dinner,  I  recollect,  was  very  good.  But 
Mr.  Disraeli  talked  very  little,  leaving  the  lady  of  the 
house  to  lead  the  conversation.  I  remember  mention 
being  made  of  Harper  Twelvetrees,  and  Mr.  Disraeli 
seemed  really  to  take  a  lively  interest  in  counting  up 
the  number  of  names  which  had  been  formed  from  trees. 
I  had  the  honour  of  making  a  remark  which  attracted 
his  attention  on  the  subject  of  portrait  galleries.  I 
asked  him  if  he  had  ever  noticed,  in  looking  at  collec- 
tions of  family  portraits,  how  the  general  type  changed 
as  you  passed  from  the  seventeenth  century  into  the 
eighteenth,  the  long  or  oval  face  predominating  in  the 
former  becoming  the  rounder  and  fatter  one  most 
common  in  the  latter.  He  said  he  never  had,  and 
turned  to  Mrs.  Disraeli  to  tell  her  what  I  had  said. 
The  change,  I  thought,  was  coincident  with  the  change 
from  claret  and  sack  to  port  and  punch,  together  with 
the  deeper  potations  which  the  Germans  made  fashion- 
able in  England.  He  seemed  to  think  it  might  be  so  ; 
but  he  pointed  out  that  claret  and  Burgundy  continued 
to  be  the  drink  of  the  higher  classes  nearly  all  through 
the  century,  and  in  support  of  the  assertion  he  quoted 
his  two  favourite  heroes,  Bolingbroke  and  Carteret, 
who  both  drank  Burgundy  in  large  quantities.  Yet 
George  I.  and  Walpole  drank  punch  together  till  the 
small  hours,  and  we  have  all  heard  of  Savage  "  roaring 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  37 

for  hot  punch  at  five  o'clock  in  the  morning/'  Mr. 
Disraeh  said  that  men  in  those  days  had  less  fear  of 
mixing  their  liquors,  and  that  this  might  be  one  cause 
at  least  of  the  greater  amount  of  drunkenness. 

We  did  not  sit  long  after  dinner.  Nor  did  Mrs. 
Disraeh  remain  with  us  long  after  we  returned  to  the 
drawing-room.  When  she  was  gone,  Mr.  Disraeli  sat  and 
chatted  with  us  for  an  hour  very  pleasantly :  told 
some  good  stories  and  said  some  good  things — a  joke 
upon  an  inn  called  the  King's  Arms  (at  Berkhamp- 
stead,  I  think)  is  the  only  one  that  I  remember.  Mr. 
Disraeli  said  he  did  not  remember  the  inn,  upon  which 
the  owner  of  the  Alderneys  assured  him  that  he  must 
be  mistaken.  '*  You  must  remember  the  house,  sir : 
there  was  a  very  handsome  barmaid  there — monstrous 
fine  gal — you  must  have  been  in  the  King's  Arms,  sir." 
V*' Perhaps,"  said  Dizzy,  *' if  I  had  been  in  her  arms  I 
might  have  remembered  it."  Mr.  Lygon  looked  grave. 
But  Mrs.  Grundy  has  now  retired  from  the  stage,  and  I 
think  I  may  repeat  the  above  without  giving   offence. 


CHAPTER    IV. 
LORD  BEACONSFIELD  (continued). 

Disraeli's  Views  on  Parliamentary  Reform  in  General — The  Reform 
Bill  of  1867  Carried — Mr.  Gladstone's  Strategy  in  1868 — Disraeli's 
Inadequate  Grasp  of  Church  Questions — His  Admiration  of 
the  Whigs — His  Reticence  on  Questions  Affecting  the  Court — His 
View  of  "  the  Rupert  of  Debate  " — Lady  Beaconsfield's  Death. 

In  1866  Lord  Derby  and  Mr.  Disraeli  came  into  office 
for  the  third  time,  and  now  again  a  great  difference 
appeared  in  the  Conservative  ranks  on  the  question  of 
parHamentary  reform.  When  it  became  known  that 
the  Government  meant  to  introduce  a  Bill,  relying  on 
the  support  of  the  Cave,  a  new  daily  paper  was  started, 
intended  as  far  as  possible  to  represent  the  views  more 
immediately  associated  with  the  AduUamites,  but  largely 
shared  by  members  on  both  sides  of  the  House. 

DisraeU*s  ideas  on  the  subject  of  parliamentary 
reform  in  general  can  hardly  be  gathered  either  from 
his  speeches  or  his  books.  Though  he  was  no  friend  to 
the  Venetian  Constitution,  he  was  as  little  a  friend  to 
democracy ;  and,  looking  at  the  question  as  a  practical 
statesman,  apart  from  historical  speculations,  he  con- 
sidered that  the  English  aristocracy  had  it  in  their  power 
before  1832  to  preserve  the  best  parts  of  the  old  Consti- 
tution intact.  But  after  1832,  he  said,  there  was  no 
stopping.  An  arbitrary  pecuniary  franchise  could  only 
be  maintained  so  long  as  it  was  not  assailed.  Not  to 
suggest  changes,  and  to  refuse  them  when  they  were 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  39 

demanded,  were  two  totally  different  things.  The 
Whigs,  he  once  said,  taught  the  English  people  to 
eat  of  the  tree  of  knowledge,  and  to  know  that  they 
were  naked.  The  rest  followed  as  a  matter  of  course. 
Successive  requests  for  more  clothing  in  the  shape 
of  franchises  had  to  be  granted  with  discretion.  A 
hungry  man  must  not  have  too  much  to  eat  all  at 
once.  It  must  be  given  by  degrees.  But  he  thought 
the  Conservative  Reform  Bill  of  1867  had  done  enough 
for  the  time.  It  had  satisfied  a  large  section  of  the 
population.  He  knew  that  more  would  have  to  be 
done.  He  said  that  of  course  the  turn  of  the  peasantry 
would  come,  almost  implying  sometimes  that  it  would 
not  be  in  his  own  time.  Others  must  carry  on  the  work, 
which,  perhaps,  need  never  have  been  begun ;  but  as 
it  had  been,  it  would  be  necessary  to  go  on. 

Such  was  the  general  impression  left  on  my  mind  by 
the  few  occasions  on  which  I  saw  him  during  his  third 
tenure  of  office.  It  was  now  that  the  Day  newspaper 
was  started  as  the  organ  of  the  Cave.  But  it  was  begun 
with  very  insufficient  capital,  and,  though  I  believe  it 
served  its  turn,  it  did  not  live  through  the  session.  I 
was  employed  to  write  the  political  leaders,  and  Mr. 
Disraeli  was  pleased  to  say,  more  out  of  good  nature, 
I  should  think,  than  conviction,  that  they  had  helped 
largely  to  carry  the  Bill.  I  was  present  at  most  of 
the  more  important  debates.  I  heard  several  of  Mr. 
Disraeli's  finest  speeches ;  and  I  remember  one  in 
particular  which  was  delivered  in  reply  to  an  amend- 
ment moved  by  Mr.  Gladstone,  abolishing  the  dis- 
tinction between  the  compound  householder — a  very 
prominent  personage  in  those  days — and  other  rate- 
payers.    It    was   the   great   trial   of   strength    for   the 


40  TORY    MEMORIES. 

session,  and  Mr.  Disraeli  made  some  of  his  happiest 
hits  in  it.  His  answer  to  Mr.  Lowe,  who  had  accused 
Sir  Stafford  Northcote  of  changing  his  opinions  for 
the  sake  of  place,  was  peculiarly  happy.  When  Mr. 
Beresford  Hope,  whose  Dutch-built  figure  and  queer 
gesticulations  many  can  remember,  declaimed  against 
an  '^  Asian  mystery,''  Mr.  Disraeli,  turning  towards  him 
with  that  peculiar  expression  on  his  face  and  that  pe- 
culiar turn  of  voice  by  which  everyone  knew  that  a 
good  thing  was  coming,  said  that  his  honourable  friend's 
style  was  ornamental,  but  required  practice,  and  that, 
as  a  comment  on  the  ^'  Asian  mystery,"  *'  the  Batavian 
grace  with  which  it  was  delivered  took  all  the  sting 
out  of  it." 

When  the  paper  was  handed  to  Mr.  Whitmore,  the 
Conservative  Whip,  a  burst  of  cheering  broke  from  the 
Conservative  ranks.  When  the  numbers  were  read  out — 
for  the  amendment,  289,  against  310 — the  hurrahs  rose 
again  and  again,  still  louder  than  before,  and  all  the  Tory 
country  gentlemen  rose  from  their  seats  and  rushed  to 
shake  hands  with  the  leader  who  was  said  to  have  be- 
trayed them.  Many  of  the  younger  members  pressed 
Mr.  Disraeli  to  return  with  them  and  have  supper  at 
the  Carlton ;  but,  as  Lady  Beaconsfield  told  me  after- 
wards, with  manifest  pride  and  joy,  "  Dizzy  came  home 
to  me."  And  she  then  proceeded  to  describe  the  supper  : 
"  I  had  got  him  a  raised  pie  from  Fortnum  and  Mason's, 
and  a  bottle  of  champagne,  and  he  ate  half  the  pie  and 
>^^  drank  all  the  champagne,  and  then  he  said,  '  Why, 
my  dear,  you  are  more  like  a  mistress  than  a  wife.'  " 
And  I  could  see  that  she  took  it  as  a  very  high  compli- 
ment indeed. 

Mr.  Lowe  had  been  much  admired  for  his  use  of  the 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  41 

Trojan  horse  in  the  debates  of  1866.  But  his  reference 
to  Chaeronea  in  1867  caused  Mr.  DisraeH  to  dub  him  an 
''  inspired  schoolboy/'     This  finished  him. 

When  the  Reform  Bill  was  carried,  with  every 
prospect  of  a  Conservative  majority  at  the  next  General 
Election,  Mr.  Gladstone  played  his  trump  card  in  the 
shape  of  the  Irish  Church  Resolution,  which  had  the 
effect  of  changing  the  issue  that  was  set  before  the 
electors  at  the  dissolution  of  Parliament.  As  Mr. 
DisraeH  said,  the  Liberals  would  never  give  a  Conserva- 
tive Reform  Bill  fair  play.  Neither  the  Bill  of  1859 
nor  the  Bill  of  1867  was  allowed  to  appeal  to  the  people 
on  its  own  merits.  On  each  occasion  a  fresh  issue  was 
suddenly  interposed  between  the  public  eye  and  the 
Reform  Act,  which  prevented  the  people  from  giving 
their  whole  attention  to  it  and  recording  their  votes 
exclusively  with  regard  to  it.  Had  they  done  so,  Mr. 
Gladstone  knew  well  enough  that  a  Ministerial  majority 
would  have  been  returned.  In  the  one  case  the  Franco- 
Austrian  War,  in  the  other  the  Irish  Church,  was  used 
to  checkmate  the  enemy.  The  move  was  perfectly  suc- 
cessful. Mr.  Gladstone  has  been  blamed  for  it,  but  I 
think  unjustly.  According  to  the  party  game,  as  played 
during  the  last  sixty  years,  it  was  perfectly  legitimate. 

Mr.  Gladstone's  strategy  had  a  two-fold  effect.  It 
forced  his  adversary  to  fight  in  a  much  less  advan- 
tageous position  than  he  would  otherwise  have  occu- 
pied, and  compelled  him  to  seek  allies  in  an  antiquated 
party  and  obsolete  shibboleth,  with  which  he  had  little 
real  sympathy,  and  with  which  the  more  cultured  sec- 
tion of  the  Church  of  England  had  still  less.  I  always 
thought  it  very  unfortunate  that  the  question  on  which 
Mr.  Disraeli  was  obliged   to  appeal  to  the  country  was 


42  TORY    MEMORIES. 

the  Irish  Church.  It  threw  him  into  the  arms  of  the 
Orange  party,  led  up  to  his  great  mistake  about  the 
Pubhc  Worship  Regulation  Bill,  and  put  him  out  of 
touch  with  the  great  body  of  Tory  High  Churchmen, 
who  were  his  natural  allies.  All  this  Mr.  Gladstone, 
no  doubt,  foresaw.  The  Church  of  England,  indeed, 
was  not  Mr.  Disraeli's  strong  point.  He  had  not  studied 
its  history,  and  did  not  understand  its  claims,  though  of 
its  practical  benefits,  and  of  what  would  result  from  the 
loss  of  it,  no  man,  not  even  Mr.  Gladstone,  has  spoken 
with  greater  force  and  clearness. 

Mr.  Disraeli  deceived  himself  about  the  General  Elec- 
tion of  1868.  His  ''  arms  of  precision  ''  speech  at  the  Lord 
Mayor's  dinner  in  1868  showed  that  he  over-estimated 
the  strength  of  the  purely  Protestant  feeling  to  which  he 
had  appealed.  These  two  years,  1867-8,  had  been  a  great 
strain  upon  him,  and  I  thought  when  I  saw  him  at  the 
Literary  Fund  dinner  in  the  last-mentioned  year  that 
he  looked  ghastly.  Here  he  lamented  his  severance 
from  the  ''  pellucid  streams  of  literature,"  which,  how- 
ever, he  was  shortly  to  have  an  opportunity  of  revisiting. 

Both  before  and  after  that  date  I  had  frequent 
opportunities  of  conversing  with  him ;  and  I  can  only 
note  down  in  BoswelHan  fashion  a  few  of  the  many 
interesting  sayings  which  I  then  heard. 

Contrary  in  some  respects  to  what  one  might  have 
expected,  he  had  a  great  admiration  for  the  Whigs ; 
not  for  their  statesmanship,  but  for  their  courage,  con- 
sistency, and  discipline.  He  likened  them  to  a  solid 
square,  on  which  throughout  the  eighteenth  century  the 
Cavaliers  charged  in  vain.  He  more  than  once  repeated 
Burke's  saying — though,  by-the-bye,  I  never  could  find 
it  in  Burke — that   the  Whigs  throughout  the  whole  of 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  43 

this  long  period  were  not  supported  by  a  majority  of 
the  nation,  but  held  their  own  by  ''  management  " — 
i.e.  generalship.  I  ventured  to  ask  him  some  questions 
once  about  the  Peelites  and  the  Court.  On  this  subject 
he  was  not  very  communicative ;  but  he  did  say, 
what  I  have  since  heard  from  Whig  lips  of  the  purest 
blood,  that  the  Whig  party  feared  Prince  Albert,  and 
thought  that  if  he  had  hved  he  might  have  brought 
on  a  colHsion  between  the  Crown  and  the  Parhament. 
*'  Party  government  is  a  necessary  evil,''  he  said.  ''  Sir 
Robert  Peel  was  growing  tired  of  it,  and  if  his  followers 
had  been  willing  to  join  in  an  attempt  to  supersede  it, 
with  the  result  of  adding  power  to  the  Crown,  we 
should  have  had  trouble."  Did  he  think  that  any  form 
or  any  measure  of  personal  government  was  possible 
with  the  reformed  Parliament  ?  *'  It  is  more  possible,*' 
he  said,  "  with  a  popular  franchise  than  with  a  restricted 
one.  Whatever  additional  power  accrued  to  the  Crown 
would  be  taken  from  the  aristocracy.  They  had  some- 
thing to  lose  by  such  a  change.  The  people  had 
nothing."  These  were  the  diplomatic  answers  he  was 
in  the  habit  of  giving  to  questions  of  this  nature.  He 
would  always  avoid  giving  a  direct  answer — without 
seeming  to  evade  the  question. 

I  remember  once  venturing  to  ask  him  whether  Lord 
Derby's  famous  reply  to  the  great  lady  who  asked  him 
whether  one  of  his  newly-appointed  colleagues  was  a 
real  man,  of  which  Mr.  Saintsbury  only  quotes  half, 
was  correctly  reported.  He  smiled,  and  said  that 
Lord  Derby,  '*  like  many  other  great  men,  sometimes 
liked  a  coarse  jest."  I  repeated  to  him  what  had  been 
told  me  by  a  near  relation  of  Lord  Derby,  namely,  that 
he  was  rather  a  vain  man  than  a  proud  one.     "  He  was 


44  TORY    MEMORIES. 

both/'  was  the  reply,  '^  but  not  in  poHtics.  His  vanity 
was  not  flattered  by  his  becoming  Prime  Minister.  He 
was  essentially  a  timid  man.''  *'  How  did  this  agree," 
I  said,  ''  with  his  being  the  Rupert  of  debate  ?  "  ''  Oh," 
he  said,  ''  rashness  and  timidity  are  closely  allied." 
But  he  did  not  think  that  the  comparison  of  Lord 
Derby  to  Rupert  was  a  very  happy  one.  What  was 
called  rashness  in  Lord  Derby  was  often  simply  careless- 
ness. As  an  instance  of  real  rashness,  he  quoted  the 
Duke  of  Wellington's  well-known  dictum  about  reform. 
That  was  an  uncalled-for  attack  upon  the  enemy's 
position,  entangling  him  in  difliculties  from  which  he 
could  never  entirely  extricate  himself. 

I  did  not  generally  find  him  willing  to  talk  about 
his  own  books — I  regarded  them  rather  as  forbidden 
ground.  But  I  did  venture  to  say  something  to  him 
about  Count  Mirabel,  in  ''  Henrietta  Temple,"  and 
Lucian  Gay  in  *'  Coningsby,"  the  one  supposed  to  be  a 
portrait  of  Count  d'Orsay,  the  other  of  Theodore  Hook. 
I  asked  him  if  he  had  not  intended  to  make  more  of 
Lucian  Gay,  as  the  story  went  on,  when  he  first  began. 
He  said,  ''  Wasn't  I  satisfied  with  the  sheep's 
tails  ?  "  *  Thus  I  got  no  direct  answer,  but  I  always 
thought  that  he  really  did  drop  Lucian  Gay  on  purpose, 
through  the  difficulty  of  keeping  him  going  at  high  pres- 
sure through  three  volumes.  He  said  he  thought 
d'Orsay  would  be  satisfied  with  his  portrait  if  he  saw 
it.  The  above  are  some  specimens  of  his  mode  of 
parrying  questions  which  he  was  either  unable  or  un- 
wilHng  to  answer.  It  was  between  1858  and  1873  that 
I  saw  the  most  of  him,  and  most  of  what  is  here  recorded 
refers  to  this   period,   the   fifteen  years   preceding  his 

♦  See  "  Coningsby,"  Chapter  XI. 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  45 

adventTto  real  power,  during  the  larger  part  of  which  he 
was  necessarily  at  greater  leisure. 

In  the  year  1872  occurred  the  death  of  Lady 
Beaconsfield,  and  that  it  was  a  heavy  blow  to  her 
husband,  nobody  who  knew  them  both  and  had  seen 
them  much  together  could  entertain  a  doubt.  Disraeli 
had  his  moments  of  weariness  and  despondency,  which, 
if  his  wife  ever  experienced,  she  carefully  concealed.  One 
might  almost  say  of  her  what  Cicero  says  of  his  daughter. 
While  she  was  alive,  wrote  the  Roman  statesman,  "  he 
always  had  in  all  his  troubles  '^  quo  confugerem,  ubi  con- 
quiescerem  ;  cujus  in  sermone  et  suavitate  omnes  cur  as  dolo- 
resque  deponerem.'*  When  we  read  the  dedication  to 
^'  Sybil  '*  one  could  almost  believe  that  the  above  words 
had  suggested  it.  ''I  would  inscribe  this  work  to  one 
whose  noble  spirit  and  gentle  nature  ever  prompt  her  to 
sympathise  with  the  suffering  ;  to  one  whose  sweet  voice 
has  often  encouraged,  and  whose  taste  and  judgment  have 
ever  guided  its  pages  ;  the  most  severe  of  critics,  but — a 
perfect  wife !  *'  And  when  he  spoke  of  the  days  following 
her  death  as  ''the  darkest  hour  of  his  existence''  he  cer- 
tainly felt  what  he  said.  She  was  always  cheerful,  always 
brave,  and  always  devoted.  And  that  she  did  not  live 
to  see  him  attain  the  goal  of  his  ambition  was  a  melan- 
choly reflection  in  which  he  must  often  have  indulged. 

There  was  a  little  joke  between  them  which  I  heard 
from  the  late  Dean  of  Salisbury.  "  You  know  I  mar- 
ried you  for  your  money,"  Disraeli  would  say  to  her. 
'*  Oh,  yes  ;  but  if  you  were  to  marry  me  again  you'd 
^  marry  me  for  love,  wouldn't  you  ?  "  was  the  regular 
reply.  ''  Oh,  yes  !  "  her  husband  would  exclaim,  and 
the  little  nuptial  comedy  ended. 


CHAPTER   V. 

LORD  BEACONSFIELD  (continued), 

"Waking  Up"  (1871) — Opposition  to  the  Ballot — His  Vigilance  in 
the  House — His  Refusal  to  take  Office  with  a  Minority  (1873) — 
His  Second  Government — The  Public  Worship  Regulation  Act — 
On  Personal  Government — In  the  Lords — "  Peace  with  Honour  " 
— Why  he  did  not  Dissolve  in  1878 — His  Eastern  Policy — Illness 
and  Death. 

During  the  Parliamentary  debates  on  the  Irish  Church 
and  the  Irish  Land  Bill  Disraeli  was  comparatively  quiet. 
But  when,  in  February,  1871,  Lord  Hartington  moved 
that  a  Select  Committee  be  appointed  to  inquire  into 
the  state  of  West  Meath  and  certain  adjoining  parts  of 
Meath  and  King's  County,  the  nature,  extent,  and 
effect  of  a  certain  unlawful  combination  and  confederacy 
existing  therein,  and  the  best  means  of  suppressing  the 
same,  he  sprang  to  his  feet  with  all  his  usual  alacrity 
and  delivered  a  very  telling  speech.  I  was  not  a  re- 
porter, but  I  was  in  the  Gallery  at  the  time,  and  the 
word  went  round  that  he  was  *'  waking  up."  On  the 
24th,  on  the  Black  Sea  Conference,  he  rose  to  his  full 
height,  and  it  was  felt  that  *'  Dizzy  "  was  a  man  again. 
This  was  a  remarkably  able  speech,  and  the  manner 
in  which  he  repHed  to  Mr.  Gladstone's  frequent  inter- 
ruptions irritated  the  Prime  Minister  not  a  little. 
When  Mr.  Gladstone  had  to  rebuke  an  opponent  he 
was  usually  solemn  and  severe,  *'  bursting  with  moral 
indignation,"     and     so     forth ;      Disraeh,     with     his 

46 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  47 

hands  on  his  hips,  and  replying  with  calm  incredulity 
and  ironical  civility  to  whatever  contradictions  or 
explanations  his  adversary  might  interpose,  was  a 
wonderful  contrast. 

In  this  speech,  too,  occurred  his  memorable  descrip- 
tion of  all  that  we  had  done  for  Ireland  at  the  instance 
of  Mr.  Gladstone.  ''  Under  his  influence  we  have 
legaHsed  confiscation,  consecrated  sacrilege,  condoned 
high  treason  :  we  have  destroyed  churches,  and  we  have 
emptied  gaols.''  Mr.  Froude,  who  quotes  this  as  an 
admirable  specimen  of  his  sarcastic  style,  says  that 
*'  the  drawHng  iteration  "  with  which  each  particular 
count  of  the  indictment  was  uttered  produced  a  marvel- 
lous effect.  I  heard  the  speech,  and  I  should  not  have 
described  it  in  that  way.  The  orator  made  a  slight 
pause  between  each  article,  which  greatly  heightened 
its  effect.  But  there  was  no  drawl.  Each  assertion 
was  dehvered  with  low-toned  emphasis — slowly,  and 
with  that  air  of  amazement  which  he  knew  so  well  how 
to  assume.  But  every  word  was  pronounced  with  special 
distinctness,  and  each  point  was  allowed  time  to  produce 
its  full  effect  before  he  proceeded  to  the  next. 

It  was  during  this  first  Administration  of  Mr.  Glad- 
stone that  the  question  of  the  ballot  was  seriously  taken 
up  by  the  Government,  who  at  first  proposed  that  it 
should  be  optional ;  and  Sir  William  Harcourt  was  the 
first  to  point  out  the  absurdity  of  the  suggestion,  since 
an  optional  ballot  would  afford  no  secrecy  whatever. 
Mr.  Disraeli  was  always  opposed  to  it.  *'  I  hate  the 
ballot,''^ he  was  heard  to  say  in  private  more  than  once, 
as  I  was  informed  by  Lord  Rowton.  But  the  *'  extinct 
volcanoes ''  were  doomed.  Neither  the  ballot  nor  the 
promised    repeal    of    the    income-tax   could    save    Mr. 


48  TORY   MEMORIES. 

Gladstone  from  defeat.  Several  unfortunate  incidents 
had  contributed  to  swell  the  bill  of  indictment  against 
the  Ministry.  One  which  Mr.  Disraeli  took  the  greatest 
advantage  of  was  the  affair  of  Sir  Spencer  Robinson, 
Controller  of  the  Navy,  who,  when  he  applied  to  Mr. 
Gladstone  for  leave  to  publish  a  correspondence  between 
himself  and  Mr.  Childers  relating  to  the  loss  of  the 
Captain^  was  told  that  he  might  do  so  provided  he  would 
change  the  dates.  This  was  too  good  a  point  for  Mr. 
Disraeli  to  pass  over.  ''  I  have  heard  many  remark- 
able things,'*  he  said,  ''  this  session,  which  promises 
to  be  rife  with  interest.  ...  I  have  heard  also  this 
session — and  I  look  upon  it  as  one  of  the  most  remark- 
able things  of  which  I  have  any  recollection — that  a 
functionary  who  sought  to  publish  a  correspondence 
connected  with  his  department,  which  he  not  only 
believed  to  be  necessary  to  vindicate  his  character, 
but  to  be  of  the  greatest  interest  to  the  country, 
received  permission  to  do  so,  provided  he  changed  the 
dates.'* 

The  tone  and  manner  in  which  he  pronounced  these 
last  five  words  baffle  description.  I  can  never  forget 
it.  Lowering  his  voice  a  little,  and  uttering  them  very 
slowly,  bending  forward  slightly  at  the  same  time 
and  looking  down  the  House,  as  was  his  wont  on 
such  occasions,  he  brought  out  the  full  force  of  the 
innuendo  with  galling  gravity.  Mr.  Gladstone,  of  course, 
had  an  answer.  But  what  it  was  I  do  not  know.  He 
only  said,  in  reply  to  Mr.  Disraeli,  that  the  accusation 
was  ''  paltry  and  contemptible,"  and  there,  so  far  as  I 
know,  the  matter  dropped  in  Parliament.  With  the 
outside  public,  however,  Mr.  Disraeli's  sarcasm  had  a 
considerable  effect,  for  the  general  public  did  not  under- 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  49 

stand  Mr.  Gladstone's  strange  request ;    nor  does  Mr. 
Morley  offer  any  explanation. 

Mr.  Disraeli  was  a  formidable  antagonist  in  the 
House  of  Commons  for  very  many  reasons,  one  among 
which  was  his  keen  vigilance.  Nothing  escaped  him, 
and  in  the  great  debate  on  the  Irish  University  Educa- 
tion Bill,  in  1873,  this  quality  served  him  in  good  stead, 
and  enabled  him  to  wind  up  the  debate  with  a  speech 
which  turned  the  scale  against  the  Government.  Mr. 
Cardwell  had  said  on  a  previous  night  that  the  Govern- 
ment were  ready  to  make  all  concessions  that  were 
required  in  a  Liberal  direction.  Many  members,  how- 
ever, did  not  happen  to  hear  what  fell  from  Mr.  Glad- 
stone afterwards,  just  as  the  House  was  breaking  up. 
The  Prime  Minister  said  that  the  statement  of  the  Secre- 
tary for  War  only  meant  that  the  Government  would 
be  perfectly  willing  to  consider  certain  questions  in 
Committee.  Mr.  Disraeli's  comment  on  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's statement  is  worth  quoting :  "I  have  had 
rather  a  long  experience  of  this  House.  I  have  seen 
many  important  measures  brought  forward  by  both  sides 
of  the  House  ;  I  have  heard  many  objections  to  those 
measures.  I  have  heard  Ministers  promise,  and  very 
properly  promise,  in  vindicating  the  second  reading  of 
their  Bill,  that  if  the  House  would  only  go  into  Committee 
all  those  objections  should  be  fairly  discussed.  But  I  have 
generally  seen  that  when  they  have  gone  into  Committee 
not  one  of  these  objections  has  been  carried."  I  did 
not  hear  the  speech  myself.  But  Disraeli's  quickness  in 
catching  Mr.  Gladstone's  words  led  up  to  one  of  the 
turning  points  in  our  Parliamentary  history,  and  settled 
the  fate  of  the  Bill,  which  marked  the  first  stage  in  the 
decline  of  the  old  Liberal  party. 


50  TORY   MEMORIES. 

I  did  not  see  much  of  Mr.  Disraeli  just  about  this 
time,  but  I  was  in  the  House  when  he  gave  his  explana- 
tion of  his  refusal  to  take  office  in  March,  1873  ;  and 
I  have  a  vivid  recollection  of  his  tone  and  manner  as 
he  described  the  situation  of  a  Government  taking 
office  in  a  minority.  He  spoke  from  bitter  personal 
experience.  *'  We  should  have  what  is  called  '  fair 
play.'  There  would  be  no  wholesale  censure,  but  re- 
tail humiliation."  (He  was  thinking  of  1852  and  1867.) 
''  In  a  certain  time  we  should  enter  into  the  paradise 
of  abstract  resolutions.  One  day  honourable  gentle- 
men cannot  withstand  the  golden  opportunity  of  asking 
the  House  to  affirm  that  the  income-tax  should  no  longer 
form  one  of  the  features  of  our  Ways  and  Means.  Of 
course,  a  proposition  of  that  kind  would  be  scouted  by 
the  right  honourable  gentleman  and  all  of  his  colleagues  ; 
but  then  they  might  dine  out  that  day,  and  the  resolu- 
tion might  be  carried,  as  resolutions  of  that  kind  have 
been.  Then  another  honourable  gentleman,  distin- 
guished for  his  knowledge  of  men  and  things,  would 
move  that  the  Diplomatic  Service  be  abolished.  While 
honourable  gentlemen  opposite  were  laughing  in  their 
sleeves  at  the  mover,  they  would  vote  for  the  motion 
in  order  to  put  the  Government  into  a  minority.  For 
this  reason  :  Why  should  men,  they  would  say,  govern 
the  country  who  are  in  a  minority  ?  And  it  would  go 
very  hard  if,  on  some  sultry  afternoon,  some  honour- 
able member  should  not  '  rush  in  where  angels  fear 
to  tread,'  and  successfully  assimilate  the  borough  and 
the  county  franchise.'* 

The  subject  suited  him  exactly  ;  and,  though  I  have 
heard  Lord  Palmerston,  Lord  Derby,  Lord  Salisbury, 
Mr.   Lowe,  Sir  WilUam  Harcourt,  and  Mr.   Gladstone 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  51 

himself,  I  have  never  heard  Mr.  Disraeli's  equal  in  the 
delivery  of  a  sarcasm.  I  think  Sir  W.  Harcourt  came 
the  nearest  to  him.     But  it  was  longo  intervallo. 

The  first  year  of  Mr.  Disraeli's  Administration  which 
succeeded  Mr.  Gladstone's  in  1874  was  marked  by  the 
passage  of  an  Act  which  has  made  it  more  famous 
than  many  more  important  events.  I  mean  the  Public 
Worship  Regulation  Act,  which,  he  said,  rather  un- 
happily, was  an  Act  ''to  put  down  Ritualism.'*  The 
phrase  stuck  to  him,  and  did  him  an  infinity  of  harm. 
But  a  knowledge  of  the  Church  of  England  was  not 
Mr.  Disraeli's  strong  point,  as  I  have  already  sug- 
gested. He  was  often  at  the  mercy  of  the  last  speaker 
who  got  his  ear.  When  he  led  the  Young  England 
party,  he  adopted  their  views  of  Church  questions,  and 
took  his  creed  from  Lord  John  Manners  and  his  asso- 
ciates. When  he  had  to  defend  the  Irish  Church,  he 
took  his  creed  from  Lord  Cairns.  Thus  he  was  thrown 
into  the  arms  of  the  Orange  party,  and  lost  the 
allegiance  of  many  of  the  High  Church  clergy,  who  were 
in  those  days  nearly  all  Conservatives. 

Many  of  his  sayings  on  the  same  subject  showed 
that  he  did  not  understand  the  idiosyncrasy  of  the 
English  clergy  as  he  understood  other  classes  of  the 
community.  They  did  not  like  his  way  of  putting 
things.  Speaking  of  ''  Essays  and  Reviews,"  he  said 
that  he  himself  was  all  for  free  inquiry,  '*  but  by  free 
inquirers."  This  gave  offence  not  only  to  the  Broad 
Church  party,  but  also  to  many  High  Church  Anglicans. 
Again,  his  assertion  that  he  ''  was  on  the  side  of  the 
angels  "  was  not  much  to  their  taste.  These  expres- 
sions, though  they  meant  nothing  more  than,  perhaps, 
the  same  men  would  have  said  in  other  words,  rather 


52  TORY   MEMORIES. 

jarred  on  the  ethos — if  I  may  use  the  word — of  a  highly 
cultivated  class,  always  shrinking  from  epigram  on 
sacred  subjects. 

After  he  took  office  in  1874,  Mr.  Disraeli  had  little 
leisure  for  private  conversation.  One  subject,  how- 
ever, which  came  up  at  that  time  he  allowed  me  to 
discuss  with  him  briefly,  and  that  was  ''  personal  govern- 
ment.'*  It  was  Baron  Stockmar's  "  Life  of  the  Prince 
Consort  '*  which  first  raised  the  question.  It  was 
taken  up  by  Mr.  Goldwin  Smith,  who  never  forgave  Mr. 
Disraeli  for  his  portrait  of  ''  the  Oxford  professor " 
in  *'  Lothair,'*  or  for  being  designated  afterwards  by 
the  same  eminent  humorist  as  "  the  wild  man  of  the 
cloister,'*  and  it  was  made  the  subject  of  an  article  in 
the  Nineteenth  Century  by  Mr.  Dunckley,  who  had 
already  written  to  the  same  effect  in  a  provincial 
journal. 

I  replied  to  this  article,  in  the  same  magazine,  a 
reply  which  drew  from  the  Spectator  an  admission  that 
the  House  of  Commons  was  losing  ground  in  public 
estimation  every  day,  and  that  the  country  ''  might 
seek  in  a  form  of  personal  power  a  new  source  of  strength 
and  vigorous  control  of  its  affairs.*'  Lord  Beacons- 
field  was  charged  with  attempting  to  set  up  this  ''  per- 
sonal power,'*  and  with  instigating  Queen  Victoria  to 
join  in  the  conspiracy.  The  charge  was  actually 
repeated  by  one  of  his  colleagues,  who  was,  however, 
not  at  that  time  a  member  of  the  Government.  Speak- 
ing of  Lord  Beaconsfield's  relations  with  the  Queen, 
he  said,  "  He  tells  her  that  she  can  govern  like  Queen 
Elizabeth,  and  she  wants  no  teaching." 

I   have   already    quoted    what    Lord    Beaconsfield 
said    about   the  greater    possibihty    of    a    revival    of 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  53 

prerogative  under  a  democratic  regime  than  under 
an  aristocratic  one.  But  he  also  gave  me  more  of 
his  views  on  the  subject  for  the  purpose  of  my  article 
in  the  Nineteenth.  Mr.  Dunckley  had  said,  "  If  the 
Queen  can  summon  7,000  Sepoys  to  Malta,  she  might 
land  70,000  at  Southampton  and  destroy  our  liberties." 
''  The  Constitution,"  said  Lord  Beaconsfield,  ''  works 
through  a  series  of  understandings,  and  depends  entirely 
on  the  moderation  and  good  sense  of  all  parties  con- 
cerned in  it.  This,"  he  begged  me  to  observe,  "  is 
just  the  guarantee  we  have  that  the  Crown  will  not 
bring  70,000  Sepoys  to  Southampton.  We  have  no 
other  security  that  it  may  not  equally  abuse  all  its 
other  great  powers.  Mr.  Dunckley 's  argument,"  he 
concluded  by  saying,  *'  is  as  good  in  principle  against 
any  standing  army  at  all  as  it  is  against  their  particular 
employment  in  our  Indian  standing  army."  I  asked 
him  what  he  supposed  to  be  meant  by  the  Sovereign 
standing  altogether  aloof  from  party,  and  whether, 
in  giving  his  confidence  to  the  Ministers  who  at  any 
given  moment  may  enjoy  the  confidence  of  Parliament, 
he  was  to  have  no  political  opinion  of  his  own,  or  to 
change  them  at  least  as  often  as  he  changed  his  Ministers. 
He  answered  :  if  that  is  the  meaning  of  the  Sovereign's 
neutrality,  it  would,  ''  to  save  him  from  being  a  political 
partisan,  make  him  a  political  infidel." 

Aristotle's  three  democratic  characteristics  are 
ayiv€ia,  irevia,  ^avavalu  (Pol.  vi.  2).  Whether  the  sinking 
process  in  Parliament  which  Mr.  Gladstone,  Mr. 
Disraeli,  and  some  of  the  best  thinkers  of  the  day 
believed  to  be  visible  thirty  years  ago  has  made  any 
further  progress  under  the  influence  of  these  three 
characteristics    I    leave    to    others    to    determine.     Mr. 


54  TORY  MEMORIES. 

Disraeli  certainly  thought  that  if  it  went  much  further 
a  great  change  would  be  impending,  and  that  a  stronger 
monarchy  would  at  least  be  preferable  to  a  Republican 
dictatorship. 

With  the  development  of  the  Eastern  Question 
and  Mr.  Disraeli's  translation  to  the  House  of  Lords 
came  a  marked  change  in  the  man.  He  held  his  own 
among  the  Peers  with  great  dignity,  and  one  or  two  of 
his  best  speeches  were  delivered  in  the  Upper  House. 
But  the  House  of  Commons  was  ''  his  natural  born 
element  ''—it  was  there  that  he  had  his  foot  upon  his 
native  heath  :  and  the  Lord  Beaconsfield  of  the  House 
of  Lords  was  necessarily  a  different  personage  from 
the  people's  ''  Dizzy,"  one  whom  they  loved  and  ad- 
mired none  the  less  because  they  did  not  understand 
him,  and  never  quite  knew  what  to  make  of  him. 

I  remember  well,  when  he  was  still  Prime  Minister, 
his  reply  to  a  question  asked  by  Lord  Granville  relative 
to  some  occurrence  which  had  attracted  public  atten- 
tion. Lord  Beaconsfield  gave  the  necessary  explana- 
tion, and  then  added,  in  the  gravest  manner  :  **  So 
your  lordships  will  see  that  there  is  not  one  word  of 
truth  in  the  statement  which  the  noble  Earl  as  the  Leader 
of  the  Opposition  in  your  Lordships'  House  has  very 
properly  made."  Lord  Granville  sat  opposite  to  him, 
smiling  with  congenial  amusement  at  all  which  the 
tone  and  manner,  the  glance  and  the  attitude,  of  his 
antagonist  implied.  I  remember,  too,  in  the  debate 
of  March  4th,  1881,  on  the  evacuation  of  Kandahar, 
how  Lord  Beaconsfield  looked  over  his  shoulder  at  the 
cross  benches  where  Lord  Derby,  who  had  defended 
the  evacuation,  then  sat,  saying  :  *'  My  noble  friend 
made  a  very  animated  speech — and  I  do  not  know  that 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  55 

there  is  anything  which  would  excite  his  enthusiasm 
except  when  he  contemplates  the  surrender  of  some 
national  possession/'  and  the  ''  faint,  well-bred  merri- 
ment/' to  borrow  his  own  words  from  *'  Coningsby/' 
which  moved  the  calm  countenances  of  that  aristocratic 
assembly  as  they  recognised  the  truth  of  the  satire.  I 
heard  the  short  speech  which  he  made  on  unveiling  the 
statue  of  Lord  Derby  at  Westminster.  Among  the 
company  present  to  witness  the  ceremony  were  Mr. 
R.  H.  Hutton,  Professor  Huxley,  and  Bishop  ElHcott. 
I  had  the  honour  of  forming  one  of  their  group,  and, 
though  all  three — certainly  the  two  first-named — were 
very  far  from  being  ''  Dizzyites,*'  they  all  showed  their 
lively  appreciation  of  one  whose  genius  alone  had  borne 
him  to  the  summit  of  affairs,  and  whose  wit,  humour, 
and  courage  had  made  him  a  popular  favourite,  in  spite 
of  the  numerous  disadvantages  with  which  he  had  had 
to  struggle. 

When  he  brought  back  ''  Peace  with  Honour  ''  from 
BerHn  it  was  not  altogether  the  kind  of  peace  which 
he  would  have  striven  for  had  he  been  able  to  have 
his  own  way  from  the  first  on  the  Eastern  Question.  He 
would  have  played  a  more  forward  game  against  Russia 
had  his  hands  been  free.  "  My  colleagues  wouldn't 
let  me,"  he  said  one  day,  as  he  sat  rather  moodily  over 
the  fire.  But,  nevertheless,  July  i6th,  1878,  was  a 
great  day  in  his  Hfe.  I  witnessed  his  reception  at 
Charing  Cross,  and  joined  in  the  cheers  which  greeted 
him  as  he  drove  out  of  the  station.  He  looked  in  high 
health  and  spirits,  and  at  that  moment  was  probably 
the  most  popular  and  powerful  man  in  her  Majesty's 
dominions.  If  he  had  dissolved  Parliament  at  that 
time,  quum  de  Teutonico  vellet  descender e  curru^  he  would 


56  TORY   MEMORIES. 

certainly  have  died  Prime  Minister.  And  I  never 
could  learn  why  he  didn't.  I  had  no  opportunity  of 
asking  him.  But  it  was  said  the  Government  were 
afraid  of  an  appeal  to  the  people  because  of  some  tem- 
porary irritation  resulting  from  their  financial  policy. 
I  can't  think  that  Lord  Beaconsfield  himself  would  have 
been  deterred  by  any  such  consideration.  But  the 
Government  had  been  alarmed  by  the  Buckingham- 
shire election  in  1876,  when  a  safe  Conservative  seat 
had  only  been  retained  by  the  small  majority  of  186. 
Had  Lord  Beaconsfield  been  ten  years  younger,  he 
might  perhaps  have  acted  differently.  But  for  the 
moment,  on  that  July  day,  now  nearly  thirty  years  ago, 
he  stood  on  a  pinnacle  of  greatness  which  may  perhaps 
have  affected  even  his  cool  and  sagacious  judgment. 

It  is  a  mistake,  by  the  way,  to  suppose  that  his 
support  of  the  Turks  was  due  to  his  Oriental  pro- 
clivities. His  sympathies  were  all  with  the  Arabs, 
between  whom  and  the  Turks  there  was  no  affinity  of 
either  race  or  tradition,  of  art  or  literature. 

Mr.  Froude  says  that  when  Lord  Beaconsfield  re- 
turned from  Berlin  he  thought  ''  he  had  secured  the 
ascendency  of  the  Conservative  party  for  at  least  a 
quarter  of  a  century."  If  he  thought  so  then  he  did 
not  think  so  long.  When,  in  the  autumn  of  1879,  ^ 
friend  who  was  about  to  leave  England  spoke  of  seeing 
him  in  Downing  Street  again  that  time  next  year,  he 
said,  *'  I  think  it  very  doubtful  whether  we  shall  be  here 
this  time  next  year." 

Since  1878  the  tide  of  his  popularity,  which  was  then 
at  flood,  had  been  slowly  ebbing  ;  and  though  he  may 
not  have  looked  forward  to  defeat  as  a  certainty,  he 
evidently  regarded  it  as  a  contingency  to  be  reckoned 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  57 

with.  Whether  even  for  his  own  sake  he  deeply  re- 
gretted it  is,  perhaps,  doubtful,  His  health  was  broken. 
He  had  lived  his  Hfe.     He  might  say  with  Dido — 

Vixi  et  quern  dederit  cursum  Fortuna  peregi. 

His  portrait  has  been  unconsciously  painted  by  the 
great  poet  of  the  Victorian  age  in  colours  that  will 
never  fade.  He  is  an  example,  if  ever  there  was  one, 
of  the  man — 

Who  makes  by  force  his  merit  known, 
And  hves  to  clutch  the  golden  keys, 
To  mould  a  mighty  State's  decrees. 

And  shape  the  whisper  of  the  Throne. 

Some  time  during  the  winter  of  1880-81  I  met  him  at 
a  reception  given  at  the  house  of  a  well-known  Tory 
hostess.  He  was  not  looking  ill  then.  He  inquired 
about  my  work.  I  told  him  of  some  articles  I  had 
been  writing  for  the  Nineteenth  Century,  one  on  the 
cause  of  the  Conservative  defeat,  which  he  said  he  had 
read,  and  agreed  with  as  to  the  borough  constituencies, 
and  also  as  to  the  EngHsh  aristocracy,  whom  I  had 
likened  to  the  ''  country  gentleman  of  Palestine  '*  who 
confided  in  his  wealth  and  great  possessions,  and  was 
doomed  to  such  a  sudden  blow.  He  said  he  had  noted 
the  comparison,  which  amused  him,  and  which  he 
thought  a  fair  one,  adding  only  that  it  was  not  so  appro- 
priate in  a  period  of  agricultural  depression  as  it  might 
have  been   in   more   prosperous   times. 

This  was  the  last  time  I  ever  saw  him.  Towards  the 
end  of  March  he  caught  cold,  which  brought  on  an  attack 
of  bronchitis,  and  he  never  left  the  house  again.  Down 
to  the  middle  of  April  hopes  were  entertained  of  his 
recovery.     But   in   the   third   week   a   sudden    change 


58  TORY    MEMORIES. 

took  place  in  the  weather.  The  17th,  Easter  Sunday, 
was  bitterly  cold,  with  a  keen  east  wind,  and  the  effect 
on  Lord  Beaconsfield  was  immediate.  On  the  following 
Tuesday,  the  19th,  I  was  returning  to  town  from  a 
visit  in  the  Eastern  counties.  The  ground  was  covered 
with  snow.  The  air  was  damp  and  foggy,  and  when  a 
friend  who  got  into  the  same  carriage  told  us  of  his 
death  it  was  only  what  I  had  expected.  The  dismal 
atmosphere  accorded  better  with  one*s  feelings  than  a 
sunny  spring  day  would  have  done.  His  death  was  a 
great  grief  to  myself,  to  whom  he  had  shown  a  measure 
of  kindness  wholly  out  of  proportion  to  any  service  I 
had  rendered  him,  and  it  was  in  his  mind  before  his 
death  to  do  me  a  still  greater  honour,  for  I  was  told  by 
Lord  Rowton  shortly  afterwards  that  Lord  Beaconsfield 
intended  his  hfe  to  be  written  by  Lord  Barrington 
and  myself.  But  as  no  instructions  to  that  effect 
were  found  among  his  papers,  the  matter  went  no 
further. 


CHAPTER    VI. 

LORD   BEACONSFIELD   {concluded). 

His  Kindness  to  Friends — Mr.  Montagu  Corry — Lord  Beaconsfield's 
Efforts  to  serve  the  Author — Not  a  Dandy  in  his  Later  Years — 
His  Popularity  with  the  Farmers  and  the  Peasantry — A  Defence  of 
his  Sincerity — His  Relations  with  the  Author. 

Lord  Beaconsfield  was  very  loyal  to  all  his  supporters, 
down  to  the  humblest,  and  he  had  a  real  sympathy 
with  journalism  which  forty  years  ago  was  not  uni- 
versal among  statesmen.  When  he  found  that  the 
best  or  the  only  way  of  rewarding  Mr.  Montagu  Corry 
was  by  giving  him  a  peerage,  there  was  a  difficulty 
about  the  insufficiency  of  Mr.  Corry's  means  to  support 
the  dignity.  Objections  to  the  grant  of  a  peerage 
where  this  insufficiency  existed  were  known  to  be  enter- 
tained in  the  highest  quarter  ;  and  there  seemed  to  be 
only  one  way  of  conquering  them.  The  letter  written 
by  Lord  Beaconsfield  to  a  relation  of  Mr.  Corry,  in  whose 
power  it  was  to  remove  this  impediment,  was  described 
to  me  by  Sir  Philip  Rose  as  one  that  would  ''  wile  the 
bird  off  the  bough."  It  had  the  desired  effect ;  and 
the  writer's  object  was  immediately  secured.  Of  his 
friends  in  the  Press  he  was  equally  mindful.  Mr. 
Coulton,  the  editor  of  the  PresSy  of  whom  I  have  already 
spoken,  would  have  been  rewarded  with  a  lucrative 
post  had  he  lived.  Unfortunately  his  death  occurred 
a  year  before  his  patron  returned  to  power.  Another 
editor  of  the  same  paper,  though  not  of  the  same  calibre, 

59 


6o  TORY   MEMORIES. 

received  a  smaller  reward.  A  sub-editor  was  made 
Inspector  of  Factories,  and  the  same  official  rank  was 
offered  to  myself.  But  as  it  would  have  taken  me  away 
from  London,  and  interrupted  the  work  which  had 
now  become  the  business  of  my  life,  I  declined  it,  with, 
I  think,  Mr.  Disraeli's  approval.  I  was  very  much 
interested  in  political  journalism,  and  having  ready 
access  to  the  Conservative  leader,  I  did  not  wish  to 
break  off  the  connection. 

Another  gentleman  there  was  on  whose  behalf  I 
once  spoke  to  Mr.  Disraeli,  and  received  from  him  the 
following  very  interesting  and  characteristic  reply — 

Aug.  18,  1873. 

Dear  Mr.  Kebbel, — My  acquaintance  with  Mr. was  slight, 

limited  I  beheve  to  one  personal  interview.  But  I  endeavoured 
to  assist  him  in  life,  and  sometimes  not  without  success.  When 
I  acceded  to  office  in  1857  [a  slip  of  the  pen  for  1858]  he  borrowed 
of  me  a  not  inconsiderable  sum,  but  I  never  heard  from  him  again, 
even  when  at  my  instance  he  obtained  from  Lord  Derby  the  office 
to  which  you  allude.  I  do  not  over  appreciate  gratitude,  nor  am 
I  inclined  to  be  at  all  exacting  in  such  matters,  still  you  will  allow 
me  to  say  that  under  all  the  circumstances  of  the  case  I  think  I  have 
done  for  Mr. as  much  as  he  deserves. 

Mr.  Disraeli,  as  I  may  continue  to  call  him, 
was  always  willing  to  assist  me.  I  have  already 
spoken  of  the  Reform  Bill  of  1859,  ^^^  "^^^  early 
information  of  its  details  which  I  received  from 
him.  In  the  following  year  I  wrote  an  article  on  him 
and  his  career  down  to  that  date,  of  which  he  corrected 
the  proofs,  enriching  it  at  the  same  time  with  marginal 
notes  of  the  greatest  interest  in  his  own  handwriting, 
which,  it  is  needless  to  say,  I  have  carefully  preserved. 
One  of  these  relates  to  events  which  have  not  always 
been  correctly  recorded.     "  The  leadership  of  the  House 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  6i 

of  Commons  was  never  offered  to  Mr.  Gladstone,  though 
Mr.  DisraeH  would  have  been  willing  to  yield  it  to  him 
in  1850-1.  It  was  offered  at  Mr.  Disraeli's  instigation 
to  Lord  Palmerston  on  two  occasions.*' 

I  had  an  interview  with  Mr.  Disraeli  before  writing 
the  article,  and  when  he  saw  the  proof  he  did  me  the 
honour  to  say  that  it  was  ''  clear  and  spirited."  But 
he  said  more  than  this  ;  and,  at  the  risk  of  being  charged 
with  vanity  and  egotism,  I  have  ventured  to  publish 

the  following  letters  : — 

Grosvenor  Gate, 

May  2,  i860. 
My  dear  Sir, — I  have  read  your  article  with  much  satisfaction. 
Generally  speaking  it  shows  a  knowledge  of  politics  which  is  not 
usual,  and  is,  therefore,  calculated  to  influence  opinion. 

Personally  speaking,  I  feel  indebted  to  you  for  a  generous  and, 
I  trust,  not  altogether  unjust  survey  of  a  difficult  career,  and  I  shall 
not  easily  forget  your  effort. 

When  this  article  was  repubUshed  four  years  after- 
wards with  some  others  in  a  volume  styled,  ''  Essays 
on  History  and  Politics,'*  Mr.  DisraeH  wrote  to  me  again, 
and  again  I  must  apologise  for  this  and  further  exhibi- 
tions of  vanity : — 

Grosvenor  Gate, 

July  II,  1864. 

My  dear  Sir, — I  have  just  written  to  Lord  Beauchamp,  who  is 
an  invalid  and  wanted  an  agreeable  companion  in  his  travels  to 
Brighton  and  about,  to  take  with  him  your  "  Essays."  I  am  de- 
lighted with  them,  and  I  think  they  will  establish  your  reputation  as 
a  sound  critic  and  a  graceful  writer. 

I  had  other  letters  from  him  of  an  equally  flattering 
character,  but  I  have  quoted  enough  to  show  the  ready 
kindness  and  encouragement  with  which  he  greeted  the 
early  literary  efforts  of  a  young  man  just  entering  life^ 
without  interest  or  connections,  and  with  little  to  com- 


62  TORY    MEMORIES. 

mend  him  to  the  notice  of  a  great  statesman  except 

admiration  of  his  genius.     What  further  small  services  I 

was  able  to  render  him  when  the  Reform  Bill  of  1867  was 

on  the  table  have  been  amply  repaid,  and  to  those  I  have 

already  referred.     But  I  must  give  one  more  letter  to 

show  not  only  the  sincerity  of  his  friendship,  but  the 

warmth  of  his  sympathy  when  appealed  to  on  a  subject 

which  nearly  concerned  my  own  future  happiness. 

At  this  time,  of  course,  the  details  of  the  coming 

Reform  Bill,  and  Cabinet  discussions  on  the  subject, 

were   absorbing   his   attention,   and  wearing  him   with 

daily  anxieties.     Yet  amidst  all  this  press  of  affairs  he 

found  time  to  write  to  me  as  follows,  fully  showing  that 

what  he  said   in  his  letter  of    i860    was    not   empty 

words —  Downing  Street, 

Feh.  15,  1867. 

Dear  Mr.  Kebbel, — I  have  been,  and  am,  so  continuously  en- 
gaged that  it  has  been  quite  out  of  my  power  to  reply  to  your  letter, 
and  I  would  not  address  you  on  such  a  subject  by  the  hand  of  another- 

The  moment  I  acceded  to  office,  I  mentioned  your  name  to  two 
of  my  colleagues,  who,  I  thought,  would  have  the  power  and  oppor- 
tunity of  forwarding  your  views,  and  expressed  the  strongest  feeling 
on  my  part  that  they  should  be  advanced  and  gratified. 

I  make  no  doubt  that  they  will  take  the  earliest  occasion  to  forward 
my  wishes.  But,  unhappily,  I  learn  from  Mr.  Corry  that  my  assump- 
tion, the  foundation  of  all  my  efforts,  that  you  could  accept  pro- 
fessional office  and  employment,  is  not  warranted,  and  that  I  must 
consider  your  case  as  that  of  one  without  a  profession. 

This  throws  immense  difficulties  in  my  way,  not  to  say  insur- 
mountable ones — ^for  there  is  scarcely  an  office  which  does  not  require 
a  professional  qualification,  but  I  will  watch  and  do  my  best  for  you.* 

I  have  given  your  book  to  read  to  Mr.  Corry,  and  you  may  com- 
municate with  him,  either  personally  or  by  letter,  without  reserve. 
He  is  almost  as  anxious  to  serve  you  as  ...  . 

One  of  the  colleagues  to  whom  he  spoke  was  Lord 
Cairns,  and  I  understood  that  a  county  court  judgeship 

*  This  promise  was  not  unfulfilled. — T.  E.  K. 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  63 

might  be  mine  if  it  suited  me  to  take  'it.  But,  though 
called  to  the  Bar,  I  had  never  practised,  never  held  a 
brief,  never  even  sat  in  court.  My  friends  urged  me  to 
accept  the  offer  if  it  came,  and  made  light  of  my  objec- 
tion. However,  I  felt  myself  wholly  unfit  for  the  posi- 
tion, and  I  believe  I  was  right  in  not  running  the  risk 
which  would  certainly  have  attended  the  acceptance  of 
it.  All  this  is  nothing  to  the  public,  except  in  so  far 
as  it  explains  Lord  Beaconsfield's  letter.  I  should  add 
here  that  when  he  spoke  to  Lord  Cairns  he  did  not  know 
that  I  had  never  practised  at  the  Bar. 

Lord  Beaconsfield  had  once  been  a  dandy,  and  had 
lived  with  the  dandies ;  and  how  completely  he 
had  caught  the  tone  of  them  may  be  seen  from 
''  Coningsby.''  But  as  he  advanced  on  the  political 
stage  he  left  his  dandyism  behind  him.  His  dress  was 
always  in  the  best  taste — black  frock  coat,  grey  trousers, 
and  well-fitting  shoes  on  his  well-shaped  feet.  His  gar- 
ments never  looked  either  old  or  new.  And  as  he 
walked  up  the  House  of  Commons  with  his  coat  but- 
toned he  looked,  men  would  sometimes  say,  as  if  pleased 
that  he  had  ''  kept  his  waist.'*  He  stooped  a  little  in  his 
later  days,  but  otherwise  he  had  a  very  neat  figure. 
I  have  said  that  he  was  not  a  dandy.  But  there  was 
one  thing  about  which  he  was  very  particular,  and  that 
was  his  wig.  When  any  Conservative  member  in  pass- 
ing to  his  seat  on  the  bench  just  above  the  front  one 
disturbed  the  arrangement  of  his  leader's  ''  back  hair," 
there  was  always  a  little  impatient  gesture  and  a  hand 
hastily  raised  and  passed  round  to  the  nape  of  the  neck 
to  repair  the  disorder  if  there  were  any. 

His  fondness  for  trees,  flowers,  and  birds  I  have 
already  touched  upon.     Besides  his  favourite  primrose. 


64  TORY   MEMORIES. 

he  loved  violets,  gardenias,  and  orchids ;  and  after 
his  death  I  was  shown  at  Hughenden  the  spot 
where  stood  his  favourite  ash  tree,  blown  down  in  a 
gale  during  one  of  those  stormy  winters  which 
occurred  in  succession  about  eight-and-twenty  years 
ago.  He  grieved  over  its  loss,  for,  independently  of 
his  love  for  this  particular  tree,  he  did  not  like  to 
see  anything  destroyed.  He  could  not  bear  to  look 
upon  a  dead  bird.  When  I  visited  Hughenden  in  the 
autumn  of  1881,  in  company  with  Lord  Rowton,  I  was 
shown  all  his  favourite  walks  in  the  woods  and  by  the 
brook,  and  I  thought  he  must  often,  remembering  who 
had  once  been  his  companion  in  all  of  them,  have  re- 
peated to  himself  the  lines  of  Mrs.  Hemans,  *'  And  by 
the  brook  and  in  the  glade  Are  all  our  wanderings  o'er  ?  " 
Even  in  the  London  parks  he  could  discover  bits  of 
sylvan  scenery.  His  own  room,  in  which  he  did  most  of 
his  writing,  was,  if  I  remember  right,  a  rather  low-roofed, 
oblong  room  looking  out  upon  the  garden  ;  and  here  he 
used  to  work,  sometimes  on  official  papers  brought  down 
to  him  from  London,  sometimes  on  a  novel,  till  four 
o'clock,  when  he  always  went  out  for  his  walk  or  drive 
before  dinner.  What  a  multitude  of  memories  and 
associations  thronged  upon  one's  mind  while  sitting  in 
the  chair  or  leaning  on  the  table  which  had  once  been 
his  !  Everything  about  the  house  was  much  as  he  had 
left  it,  with  the  exception  that  the  peacocks  were  no 
longer  there.  The  Queen  herself  had  taken  charge  of 
them. 

Though  not  a  typical  English  country  gentleman, 
for  he  neither  hunted,  nor  shot,  nor  even  tried  to 
throw  a  fly  upon  the  trout  stream  which  he  loved, 
he     was     naturally     very     popular     with     both     the 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  65 

farmers  and  the  peasantry.  He  liked  to  look  in  at  the 
cottages  and  talk  to  the  village  matrons  at  their  tea- 
time  ;  and  he  has  remarked  with  what  perfect  good 
breeding  a  peasant's  wife  would  receive  you.  She 
was  never  uncertain  of  her  position,  an  uncertainty, 
which,  he  said,  was  the  main  cause  of  awkwardness  in 
Society.  This  was  one  of  his  sayings  which  I  have 
treasured  up.  He  loved  the  country  and  its  beech 
woods,  as  I  have  said.  He  revelled  in  a  warm,  bright 
sun,  and  once  told  me  he  never  wondered  at  the  sun- 
worshippers.  But  his  heart,  after  all,  was  in  London, 
in  among  the  throngs  of  men,  or  drinking  delight  of 
battle  with  his  peers.     Hcb  tibi  erunt  artes. 

A  well-known  Conservative  member  and  a  steady 
supporter  of  Mr.  DisraeU  once  said  to  me  that  he 
doubted  his  sincerity  at  bottom — not  his  loyalty  or 
fidelity  to  the  party  which  he  led  :  he  never  swerved  in 
his  allegiance,  and  devoted  all  his  great  powers  with- 
out stint  to  the  service  of  those  "  to  whom  he  had  sold 

his  sword.' '     I  remember  Mr.  R saying  this  to  me 

as  we  were  walking  away  one  Sunday  afternoon  from  a 
house  where  we  had  both  been  calling,  and  where 
Disraeli  had  been  one  of  the  subjects  of  conversation. 
No  one,  said  my  friend,  could  question  his  honesty  or 
his  honour  as  between  himself  and  his  party.  But  did 
he  really  believe  in  Conservatism  ?  Or  had  he  not  chosen 
his  party  simply  because  it  afforded  the  readiest  road 
towards  the  goal  of  his  ambition  ? 

This  estimate  of  the  Conservative  leader  was  not 
peculiar  to  my  friend.  But  those  who  entertained  it 
could  not  have  studied  either  his  character  or  his  writings 
very  deeply.  He  was  an  aristocrat  of  aristocrats.  He 
had  no  notion  of  allowing  political  power  to  be  divorced 


66  TORY   MEMORIES. 

from  the  principle  of  birth  and  property.  He  always 
spoke  of  the  country  gentlemen  of  England  as  the 
natural  leaders  of  the  rural  population.  Both  in  his 
speeches  and  in  his  writings  he  loved  to  dwell  on  the 
advantages  of  what  he  called  *'  a  territorial  constitu- 
tion." And  perhaps  he  did  not  always  make  sufficient 
allowance  for  the  inroads  which  had  been  made  in  it 
during  the  fifty  years  that  followed  the  first  Reform  Bill. 
Such,  at  least,  is  the  impression  which  his  language  on 
the  subject  has  left  upon  my  own  mind.  His  sarcasms 
at  the  expense  of  the  EngHsh  aristocracy  were  Umited 
to  a  very  small  section  of  them,  though  often  mistaken 
for  contempt  of  aristocracy  in  general.  There  could  not 
be  a  greater  error.  He  believed  himself  to  possess  a 
pedigree  compared  with  which  the  pedigrees  of  the 
oldest  families  in  Christendom  were  as  things  of  yester- 
day. 

As  for  forms  of  government,  his  ancestors  had  lived 
under  a  theocracy  not  very  like  government  by  Tra- 
falgar Square.  The  very  charges  brought  against  him 
of  a  leaning  to  personal  government,  and  a  desire  to 
exalt  the  prerogative,  all  point  in  the  same  direction. 
Whether  he  had  sold  his  sword  to  the  Conservatives 
or  not,  he  could  never  have  sold  it  to  the  Destructives. 
If  he  had  been  really  a  Radical  there  was  every  open- 
ing for  him  after  the  Reform  Bill.  This  is  too  often 
forgotten.  But  I  must  not  be  led  into  a  long  disserta- 
tion on  Mr.  Disraeli's  political  principles,  as  I  am  con- 
cerned now  rather  with  my  own  recollections  of  him. 
If  I  have  dwelt  too  long  upon  them,  or  said  too  much 
about  myself,  my  excuse  must  be  the  pardonable  pride 
and  pleasure  with  which  I  look  back  on  the  intimacy 
which  he  allowed  and  encouraged,  and  the  fact  that  I 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  67 

won  my  own  way  to  his  esteem  without  either  influence 
or  introductions. 

In  the  biographies,  memoirs,  and  magazine  articles 
which  have  been  written  about  him  during  the  last 
quarter  of  a  century  I  have  seen  very  little  as  far 
as  concerns  actual  personal  intercourse  with  the  great 
statesman  which  may  not  be  found  in  my  own  Life  of 
him,  written  very  shortly  after  his  death ;  or  in  my  edition 
of  his  speeches  published  by  Messrs.  Longmans  in  1882, 
which  has  been  drawn  upon  by  other  writers,  not 
always  with  any  acknowledgment  of  the  debt.  I  have 
endeavoured  in  these  ''Memories''  to  confine  myself  as 
much  as  possible  to  what  I  saw  and  heard  with  my 
own  eyes  and  ears  during  the  five-and-twenty  years  over 
which  my  acquaintance  with  him  extended.  But  for 
some  things  I  am  indebted  to  members  of  the  House  of 
Commons,  and  for  one  or  two  to  the  late  Duchess  of 
Rutland,  whose  Memoir  of  his  later  years  was  pub- 
lished soon  after  his  death.  In  his  ''  Little  Life ''  of 
Lord  Beaconsfield  Mr.  Walter  Sichel  has  mentioned 
circumstances  whch  have  found  a  place  in  these  re- 
miniscences, but  as  I  had  been  long  acquainted  with 
them  I  did  not  conceive  myself  precluded  from 
recording  them  here. 

As  Mr.  Froude  truly  says,  he  had  few  intimate 
friends.  He  thinks  there  were  but  two — his  wife  and 
Mrs.  Willyams — to  whom  he  was  tenderly  attached. 
But  I  think  we  may  add  to  the  list  Lord  Rowton,  who 
certainly  had  a  large  share  of  his  .affection,  and  fully 
deserved  it.  I  saw  a  good  deal  of  Lord  Rowton  at 
one  time  ;  and  besides  his  genial  good  humour,  and 
friendly  sympathies,  the  simplicity  and  naturalness  of 
his  character  and  his  manners  were  extremely  winning. 


68  TORY   MEMORIES. 

How  well  I  remember  his  saying  to  me  when  for  some 
reason  he  had  asked  my  age,  ''  Ah,  Fm  sixty  :  it's  a 
great  bore." 

I  have  said  that  after  Lord  Beaconsfield*s  death 
I  visited  Hughenden  with  Lord  Rowton,  and  it  was 
to  assist  him  in  looking  through  the  papers  and  letters 
which  were  left  at  his  discretion.  We  turned  over 
boxful  after  boxful,  but  found  nothing  of  sufficient 
interest  to  warrant  our  making  any  selection  from  them, 
nor  did  I  ever  hear  from  Lord  Rowton  subsequently 
that  he  had  found  any  others.  But  if  others  existed, 
furnishing  new  materials,  either  political  or  personal, 
they  will  doubtless  be  referred  to  in  the  more  com- 
plete biography  of  Lord  Beaconsfield  which  is  now 
promised  us. 

I  have  not  been  careful  to  observe  any  strict  chrono- 
logical order.  In  ''  rambling  recollections  "  such  as 
these  it  is  not  required — even  if  it  would  not,  to  some 
extent,  impair  their  interest.  All  that  I  have  tried  to 
do  is  to  set  down  as  accurately  as  I  could  whatever 
passed  in  the  way  of  personal  intercourse  between  Lord 
Beaconsfield  and  myself,  all  that  I  heard  of  his  speeches 
in  Parliament,  and  whatever  I  was  told  by  others 
which  has  not  become  common  property.  But  it  was 
impossible  to  avoid  introducing  some  passages  which 
are  already  familiar  to  the  public  ;  while  in  what  has 
been  quoted  from  his  speeches  in  Parliament  there  are 
necessarily  many  more  which  are  now  household  words. 

These  reminiscences  have  been  written  entirely  from 
memory,  except  the  letters  of  Mr.  Disraeli  which  I 
have  quoted ;  and  I  daresay  I  have  omitted  some 
things  which,  had  I  been  writing  twenty  years  ago,  I 
might    have   remembered.     But    not,    I    think,   many. 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  69 

It  was  Mr.  Disraeli,  in  reality,  who  shaped  my  life, 
and  his  is  the  principal  figure  which  passes  before 
my  eyes  as  I  look  back  upon  it.  As  he  is  the  only  patron 
I  ever  had,  I  cannot  compare  him  with  others.  But  I 
suppose  the  '*  patron,''  as  handed  down  to  us  by  the 
eighteenth-century  writers,  is  now  extinct,  and  that  no 
struggling  man  of  letters  ever  finds  him  *'  a  native  of 
the  rocks.'*  I  have  fondly  imagined  my  relations  with  Mr. 
Disraeli  to  have  resembled  in  some  slight  degree  Crabbe's 
relations  with  Burke.  Certainly  there  was  something 
in  his  manner,  no  less  than  in  his  actions,  to  inspire 
one  with  affection  as  well  as  admiration  and  gratitude. 
The  kindly  interest  which  he  took  in  my  affairs  might 
almost  have  been  called  paternal.  And  it  is  impossible 
for  me  to  look  back  upon  him  from  any  such  detached 
point  of  view  as  might  ensure  a  more  impartial  estimate. 
Like  Johnson,  he  had  ''  fought  his  way  by  his  litera- 
ture and  his  wit "  ;  nor  would  all  his  efforts  have  availed 
him  in  the  struggle  had  not  his  genius  shone  through  the 
clouds  of  detraction  which  for  a  time  obscured  it ;  and 
had  not  the  force  of  his  character  and  the  strength  of  his 
will  compelled  all  ordinary  obstacles  to  give  way  before 
him.  fThat  the  secession  of  the  Peelites,  who  stood 
sulkily  aloof,  and  the  death  of  Lord  George  Bentinck 
brought  him  his  opportunity,  may  be  true  enough.  But 
all  men  who  rise  in  the  world  by  their  own  exertions 
must  wait  for  their  opportunity,  and  that  they  were  able 
to  seize  it  when  it  came  is  all  that  can  be  said  of  many 
of  the  world's  heroes.  The  opportunity  offered  to 
Disraeli  was  the  vacancy  in  a  post  which  had  been 
filled  by  such  men  as  Wyndham,  Pulteney,  Fox, 
Peel,  and  Russell.  Disraeli  was  equal  to  the  occasion, 
and    that  when  he  had  once    gained    it   he   held   the 


70  TORY   MEMORIES. 

position  for  thirty  years,  "ever  foremost  in  the  fight, 
face  to  face  with  antagonists  who  were  reputed  the 
ablest  speakers,  the  most  powerful  thinkers  whom 
the  country  could  produce,' '*  is  the  best  proof  that  the 
acceptance  of  him  was  no  mere  temporary  make- 
shift, but  that  in  the  fearless  orator  who  always  singled 
out  the  tallest  foeman  for  attack,  the  Tory  party  and 
the  nation  at  large  had  found  a  born  leader. 

Power  came  to  him  too  late  in  hfe.  When  he  took 
office  in  1874  he  was  sixty-nine  years  of  age,  and  more 
disposed  to  regard  Downing  Street  as  a  haven  of  rest 
than  as  a  basis  for  future  and  more  laborious  opera- 
tions. But  it  is  a  great  mistake  to  regard  his  career  as 
a  failure.  To  have  rebuilt  a  great  political  party  after 
it  had  been  shattered  by  the  defection  of  its  own  leader, 
and  to  have  raised  it,  in  spite  of  its  unpopular  ante- 
cedents, to  such  a  height  of  public  favour  that  of  the 
thirty-nine  years  which  followed  his  great  measure  the 
Tories  were  in  power  with  large  majorities  for  twenty- 
three,  is  a  feat  which,  if  he  had  done  nothing  else,  would 
have  entitled  his  career  to  be  called  a  great  success. 

I  conclude  these  memories  of  Lord  Beaconsfield 
with  an  extract  from  a  letter  written  to  me  by  Lord 
Rowton  in  1886,  which  will  show,  I  hope,  that  I  have  not 
been  guilty  of  presumption  in  claiming  to  possess  some 
knowledge    of    the     great    statesman's    character    and 

principles  : — 

31,  Hill  Street, 

Jan,  14,  1886. 
Dear  Mr.   Kebbel, — .     ...    It  is  now  nearly  twenty  years 
since  my  dear  old  friend  told  me  to  read  something  of  yours  as  the 
work  of  one  who  "  understood  him,"  as  there  were  not  many  such 
at  that  time.  Very  truly  yours, 

Rowton. 

*  Froude. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

SOME  OTHER  TORY  STATESMEN. 

The  Late  Duke  of  Rutland — Belvoir  Castle  and  the  Squirearchy — A 
Survival  of  Eighteenth-century  Toryism — "  Young  England  " — A 
Visit  to  the  Castle — In  the  Belvoir  Kennels — The  Duchess's  Stories 
of  the  Imperial  Court  —  The  Late  Lord  Carnarvon  :  A  Day  at 
Highclere. 

The  late  Duke  of  Rutland,  better  known  perhaps  as 
Lord  John  Manners,  was  one  of  Lord  Beaconsfield's 
earliest  friends  ;  and  as  Belvoir  Castle  was  the  head  of 
the  Tory  interest  in  the  county  of  Leicester,  the  clergy 
and  gentry  who  dwelt  within  its  borders,  being  nearly 
all  of  them  Tories,  were  necessarily  much  interested 
in  all  the  sayings  and  doings  of  the  Manners  family.  I 
remember  being  taken  to  Leicester  to  hear  Lord  John 
speak  at  a  public  meeting  when  I  was  quite  a  child, 
and  I  marvelled  in  my  own  mind  how  anyone  who  had 
such  a  difficulty  in  expressing  himself  should  venture  to 
speak  in  pubUc  at  all.  I  soon,  however,  got  to  know 
the  reason  why  ;  and  Lord  John  Manners  himself,  who 
was  then  a  neophyte  and  evidently  highly  nervous, 
gradually  improved,  till  he  became  in  time  one  of  the 
most  effective  debaters  in  the  House  of  Commons, 
though  he  was  never  an  orator  and  made  no  pretence  to 
the  higher  flights  of  eloquence.  In  those  days  Belvoir 
Castle  was  kept  up  in  great  style,  and  the  county  was 
entertained  there  with  liberal  hospitality.  My  father,  who 
was  Vicar  of  Wistow,  then  owned  by  Sir  Henry  Halford, 

7" 


72  TORY   MEMORIES. 

accompanied  that  famous  physician  to  Belvoir — I 
think  about  the  year  1835,  or  1836,  when  Lord  John 
Manners  was  a  youth  of  seventeen — and  he  amused  us 
all  with  his  account  of  the  manner  in  which  his  young 
lordship  had  shown  him  over  the  castle.  He  had  been 
assured  beforehand  that  it  would  be  necessary  for  him. 
to  take  his  manservant  with  him  to  wait  outside  his 
door,  as  there  were  no  bells  in  the  bedrooms.  The  man, 
a  middle-aged  respectable  servant  of  the  old  stamp, 
who  had  been  with  us  for  years,  was  not  accustomed 
to  the  ways  of  great  houses,  and  being  out  of  livery 
was,  of  course,  placed  with  the  upper  servants,  the 
gentlemen's  gentlemen,  who  drank  claret  and  Bur- 
gundy, beverages  not  at  all  to  the  taste  of  our  un- 
fortunate domestic,  who  made  very  wry  faces  when  he 
spoke  of  it  afterwards. 

Notwithstanding  the  general  popularity  of  the  Bel- 
voir family,  and  the  respect  with  which  they  were 
regarded  as  the  leaders  of  the  county  Society,  and  the 
heads  of  a  great  political  connection,  there  was,  I  have 
heard,  not  infrequently  some  sHght  degree  of  friction 
between  the  ''  Castle  interest,"  as  it  was  called,  and 
the  minor  gentry  or  squirearchy  of  the  county.  This 
was  a  survival  of  the  old  Toryism  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  when  the  majority  of  the  provincial  nobility, 
though  still  calling  themselves  Tories,  were  *  reconciled 
to  the  Court  and  offered  Uttle  opposition  to  the  Govern- 
ment. But  ''the  wealthy  country  gentlemen  of 
England,''  says  Sir  Walter  Scott,  ''a  rank  which  re- 
tained with  much  of  ancient  manners  and  primitive 
integrity  a  great  proportion  of  obstinate  and  unyielding 
prejudice,  stood  aloof  in  haughty  and  sullen  opposition, 
and  cast  many  a  look  of  mingled  regret  and  hope  to 


SOME    OTHER    TORY    STATESMEN.         73 

Bois  le  Due,  Avignon,  and  Italy/'  It  is  well  known 
how  tenaeiously  a  sentiment  of  this  kind  will  hold 
its  ground  long  after  the  cause  which  originally  gave 
birth  to  it  is  forgotten.  This  was  the  case  in  Leicester- 
shire. At  least,  so  I  was  assured  in  the  middle  of  the 
last  century  by  an  old  Tory  politician  who  took  an 
active  part  in  county  elections,  and  had  a  large  practice 
as  a  doctor  among  the  class  referred  to  ;  so  that  he  had 
every  opportunity  of  observing  such  traces  of  the 
ancient  jealousy  as  still  lingered  among  them.  This 
moribund  tradition  which,  though  all  significance  had 
departed  from  it,  was  still  alive  in  the  last  generation 
seems  to  me  one  of  the  most  interesting  old  Tory 
memories  which  I  am  able  to  recall.  It  connects  us 
so  closely  with  the  past ;  with  the  days  when,  very 
possibly.  Sir  Charles  Halford,  the  ancestor  of  our  own 
squire,  as  he  walked  among  his  deer  at  Wistow,  may 
have  indulged  in  the  same  hopes  and  regrets  as  Sir 
Everard  at  Waverley  Honour. 

When  I  first  began  to  hear  people  talk  about  Lord 
John  Manners,  "  Young  England  ''  was  on  everyone's 
tongue,  both  in  political  and  social  circles.  Lord  John 
himself  had  entered  the  House  of  Commons  in  1841, 
being  then  in  his  twenty-third  year ;  and  in  the  fol- 
lowing autumn  he  joined  Mr.  DisraeU  and  the  Hon. 
George  Smythe  in  a  tour  through  the  manufacturing  dis- 
tricts, that  they  might  judge  for  themselves  of  the  con- 
dition of  the  factory  population,  which  had  some  years 
before  been  brought  under  the  notice  of  the  pubHc  by 
Mr.  Sadler,  the  Tory  member  for  Newark,  and  author 
of  the  first  Factory  Bill  ever  introduced  into  the  House 
of  Commons.  It  was  referred  to  a  Select  Committee, 
and,   says   Mr.   Spencer   Walpole,   the   evidence   taken 


74  TORY   MEMORIES. 

before  it  "  revealed  a  state  of  misery  which  even  Sadler 
had  not  disclosed/'  Sadler  had  no  seat  in  the 
Reformed  Parliament.  But  the  factory  question  was 
taken  up  by  Lord  Ashley,  who,  though  unsuccessful 
himself,  made  such  an  impression  on  Parliament  and 
the  public  that  Lord  Althorp,  the  Leader  of  the  House, 
brought  in  and  passed  the  first  Factory  Bill  which  was 
ever  placed  upon  the  Statute  Book.  The  younger  Tories, 
however,  were  by  no  means  satisfied  that  enough  had 
been  done,  and  hence  the  tour  of  inspection  which  I  have 
just  described. 

In  *'  Coningsby,*'  Lord  John  Manners,  as  all  the 
world  knows,  figures  as  Lord  Henry  Sidney,  and  he  was 
always  regarded,  even  more  than  Disraeli  himself,  as 
embodying  in  his  own  person  the  true  ideal  of  Young 
England.  How  this  was  at  first  ridiculed  is  a  matter 
of  history.  Lord  John's  poetry  was,  of  course,  made 
fun  of.  Veteran  poHticians  treated  the  Young  England 
party  as  so  many  children.  Punch  ridiculed  their  white 
waistcoats.  But  it  would  be  a  great  mistake  to  found 
our  estimate  of  the  Young  England  party  on  what  was 
said  of  it  at  the  time  by  critics,  either  grave  or  gay,  who 
had  special  reasons  for  abusing  it. 

The  Morning  Chronicle  and  the  Times  both  did 
justice  to  the  ability  of  these  young  men,  and  were 
very  severe  on  Sir  Robert  Peel  for  attempting  to  put 
them  down  with  that  ofiicial  hauteur  for  which  he  was, 
perhaps,  a  little  too  remarkable.  Time  has  shown  that 
on  some  points  they  were  in  the  right  and  Sir  Robert  in 
the  wrong,  notably  on  the  question  of  factory  legisla- 
tion. It  was  not,  however,  with  the  condition  of  the 
manufacturing  poor  that  Lord  John  Manners  princip- 
ally concerned  himself  in  Parhament,  though  always 


SOME    OTHER   TORY    STATESMEN.  75 

voting  with  Lord  Ashley.  It  was  in  the  peasantry  of 
England  that  he  took  the  deepest  and  most  constant 
interest ;  and  he  was  always  to  be  found  in  the  front 
when  measures  for  the  relief  or  advancement  of  the 
agricultural  labourer  were  in  hand.  In  debates  on  waste 
lands,  enclosures,  allotments,  and  the  like  he  always 
took  part,  and  it  is  interesting  to  find  the  names  of  all 
the  chief  of  the  Young  England  party  in  the  minority 
who  supported  Mr.  Walter's  motion  for  the  reform  of 
the  then  Poor  Law  in  1843 — Cochrane,  Disraeli,  Lord 
J.  Manners,  and  the  Hon.  George  Smythe. 

At  a  later  period  Lord  John  had  his  revenge  on  his 
detractors.  When  Lord  John  Russell,  in  the  House 
of  Commons,  twitted  him  with  his  lines  about  our  old 
nobihty,  he  replied,  ''  I  would  rather  have  written  these 
verses,  foohsh  as  they  may  be,  than  be  the  man  to  re- 
mind me  of  them  now." 

In  1864  I  sent  a  copy  of  an  essay  of  mine  to  Lord 
John  Manners,  and  had  a  very  polite  note  in  reply.  But 
I  did  not  see  much  of  him  till  after  his  accession  to  the 
dukedom  in  1888.  I  heard  him  speak  several  times  in 
the  House  of  Commons,  and  Mr.  Leycester,  who  was 
then  the  chief  of  the  Times  staff  in  the  Gallery,  used 
to  say,  in  common  with  other  reporters,  that  he  was  the 
last  of  the  debaters,  meaning  that  few  men  were  left 
who  could  rise  in  the  middle  of  a  long  debate,  and 
answer  the  previous  speakers  point  by  point  without 
digressing  into  other  matters  or  propounding  counter 
theories  of  their  own. 

It  was  in  the  year  1888  that,  being  asked  to  under- 
take a  Life  of  the  poet  Crabbe,  I  wrote  to  the  Duke  of 
Rutland,  as  he  had  then  become,  to  ask  him  if  any 
traditions  relating  to  the  poet  were  still  preserved   at 


76  TORY    MEMORIES. 

Belvoir,  where  he  had  spent  some  time  as  chaplain  to  the 
fourth  Duke  of  Rutland,  Pitt's  great  friend,  a  man  of 
high  ability  and  literary  culture,  quite  capable  of  con- 
versing with  Crabbe  on  questions  of  art  and  poetry. 
Crabbe  had  afterwards  held  the  living  of  Muston,  a  village 
in  the  neighbourhood,  which  I  was  anxious  to  visit. 
The  answer  was  a  kind  invitation  to  come  down  to 
Belvoir  from  Friday  to  Monday  and  hear  whatever 
there  was  to  be  told. 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  I  accepted  the  invitation 
at  once  ;  but,  being  unable  to  get  away  on  Friday, 
I  was  obliged  to  get  off  as  early  as  I  could  on 
Saturday  morning  after  a  night's  work  at  the  office. 
I  arrived  at  the  Castle  about  two  o'clock,  if  I  remember 
aright,  and  was  received  by  the  Duchess  who,  had  I 
been  able  to  go  down  the  previous  evening,  would  have 
driven  me  over  to  Muston  herself  that  morning,  and 
very  probably  would  have  been  able  to  tell  me  many 
things  which,  as  it  was,  I  missed.  She  was  otherwise 
engaged,  however,  in  the  afternoon  ;  and  after  luncheon 
a  groom  drove  me  over  to  Muston  with  a  note  of  intro- 
duction to  the  resident  clergyman.  Here  I  picked  up 
a  great  deal  of  novel  and  interesting  information  about 
the  poet,  which  I  embodied  in  my  short  biography. 
But  the  Duke  himself  did  not  seem  to  have  heard  much 
about  him. 

On  my  return  to  the  Castle,  it  was  time  to  dress 
for  dinner.  The  party  consisted,  besides  the  Duke 
and  Duchess,  of  Lord  and  Lady  Granby,  Mr.  Norman 
(the  Castle  chaplain),  and  Lord  Cecil  and  LordWiUiam 
Manners.  The  two  younger  sisters.  Lady  Victoria  and 
Lady  Ehsabeth  Manners,  I  did  not  see  till  next  morn- 
ing.    I  remember  that  I  narrowly  escaped  committing 


SOME    OTHER   TORY    STATESMEN.  77 

a  gross  breach  of  etiquette  when  dinner  was  announced. 
But  luckily  no  one  observed  it.  I  was  standing  next 
to  Lady  Granby,  and  I  don't  think  we  were  either  of 
us  speaking  at  the  moment,  when  the  Duke,  who  was 
sitting  at  the  other  end  of  the  room,  came  up  to  us, 
just  as  dinner  was  announced,  and  said  to  me,  *'  Let 
me  introduce  you  to  my  daughter-in-law.  Lady  Granby." 
Now,  it  had  never  entered  into  my  head  that  I  could 
be  intended  to  take  Lady  Granby  into  dinner ;  yet  the 
Duke's  introduction  at  that  particular  moment,  when 
a  move  was  being  made  towards  the  dining-room,  looked 
so  much  like  it,  that  in  another  second  of  time  I  should 
have  offered  her  ladyship  my  arm.  But  the  momentary 
hesitation  saved  me.  Before  I  could  perpetrate  so 
dreadful  a  blunder  the  Duke  took  Lady  Granby  himself, 
which,  of  course,  was  what  he  had  all  along  intended. 
Sic  me  servavit  Apollo.  For  the  Duke  in  his  youth 
might  have  sat  for  the  god.  He  was  eminently  hand- 
some, and  I  knew  an  old  lady,  a  connection  of  my 
own,  who  was  fond  of  reminding  us  that  when  a  young 
girl  of  twenty  she  had  once  danced  with  him. 

At  breakfast  next  morning  Lord  Cecil,  I  think,  com- 
plained that  there  was  nothing  hot,  and  declared  that 
he  had  had  no  breakfast  since  he  came  to  Belvoir.  The 
Duchess  admitted  that  it  was  very  disgraceful,  but 
recommended  her  son  to  have  some  gruel  at  eleven 
o'clock.  As  there  was  an  excellent  pigeon  pie  on  the 
sideboard,  and  other  cold  viands  as  well,  I  did  not  pity 
that  young  nobleman  so  deeply  as  I  otherwise  might 
have  done. 

The  interval  between  chapel  and  luncheon  I  spent 
with  Lord  William,  who  undertook  to  show  me  over  the 
Castle  just  as  his  father  had  shown  my  own  father  over 


78  TORY   MEMORIES. 

it  fifty  years  before.  Billy,  as  he  was  called  in  the  family, 
was  the  youngest  son — her  Benjamin,  the  Duchess  called 
him — and  the  next  morning,  when  he  went  back  to  school 
at  Wellington  College,  I  travelled  up  to  town  with 
him  and  Lord  Granby,  who  had  been  Lord  SaHsbury's 
private  secretary.  Lord  Granby  contrasted  his  Chief 
with  Gladstone,  who  would  have  liked  to  show 
himself  at  the  window  of  the  carriage  and  bow  to  some- 
body at  every  station  where  the  train  stopped.  He 
said  he  never  could  get  Lord  SaHsbury  to  show  himself 
at  all.  Even  if  there  was  a  crowd  on  the  platform  ex- 
pecting him,  it  was  with  great  difficulty  that  he  could  be 
persuaded  to  recognise  them. 

In  the  afternoon.  Lord  Cecil  had  asked  me  if  I  should 
like  to  see  the  kennels,  to  which  I,  of  course,  said  yes. 
We  went  down  accordingly,  and  I  soon  found  myself 
in  the  middle  of  a  pack  of  hounds  said  to  be  the  hand- 
somest in  England,  whose  attentions  were  rather  more 
demonstrative  than  pleasant.  When  somebody  men- 
tioned in  Lady  Victoria's  presence  the  common  belief 
that  if  the  huntsman  or  whipper-in  went  into  the  kennels 
without  his  red  coat  the  hounds  would  fly  at  him,  the 
little  lady,  then  about  twelve  years  old,  entered  a  most 
vigorous  protest  against  the  libel  on  her  favourites. 
*'  No,  no,"  she  exclaimed,  and  when  told  by  her  governess, 
I  think,  that  she  was  a  little  too  emphatic,  she  only 
repeated  her  negation  with  still  greater  energy  than 
before  :  '*  No,  no,  no,  no,  no  !  "  Her  young  lady- 
ship, I  believe,  even  at  this  early  age  was  sometimes 
deputed  to  show  visitors  over  the  Castle,  and  doubt- 
less she  was  quite  equal  to  the  occasion. 

The  hounds,  however,  when  I  was  among  them, 
were  perfectly  good-tempered,  though  I  ran  some  risk 


SOME    OTHER   TORY    STATESMEN.  79 

of  being  knocked  down  by  their  caresses,  which  is  always 
rather  a  perilous  situation  ;  and  when  Lord  Cecil  and 
Mr.  Gillard,  the  huntsman,  had  gone  away  and  left  me 
alone  with  them,  I  was  not  altogether  quite  so  much 
at  my  ease  as  I  could  have  wished  to  be.  One  hound  in 
particular — ^who,  I  had  been  told,  was  a  very  savage 
dog — sat  upon  a  stone  by  himself  at  a  little  distance, 
and  took  no  part  in  the  somewhat  boisterous  welcome 
accorded  me  by  his  fellows.  However,  to  have  shown 
any  signs  of  uneasiness  might  have  been  risky,  and  I 
continued  to  pat  and  talk  familiarly  to  all  the  animals, 
who  approached  me  as  if  they  were  old  friends,  and 
being  a  great  lover  of  dogs,  I  was  able  to  make  them 
understand  me.  But  I  don't  much  desire  another  such 
quarter  of  an  hour.  The  hunt  was  kept  up  at  that 
time  at  its  full  strength  ;  there  were  sixty-two  couples 
of  hounds  and  eighty  hunters.  But  there  were  only 
three  gamekeepers  for  the  whole  of  the  large  property 
adjoining  the  Castle,  though,  as  Lord  Cecil  assured  me, 
there  was  always  abundance  of  game. 

In  the  evening  the  Duchess  invited  myself  and  some 
others  of  the  party,  I  forget  which,  to  sit  beside  her  on 
the  sofa,  while  she  amused  us  with  an  account  of  her 
visit  to  Berlin,  whither  she  had  gone  with  the  Duke  in 
attendance  on  Queen  Victoria  in  the  preceding  April. 
She  drew  some  graphic  pictures  of  the  etiquette  of  the 
Imperial  Court.  Following  the  royal  party  into  dinner, 
the  ladies  and  gentlemen  went  in  single  file,  the  ladies 
first,  and  not  arm-in-arm.  She  did  not  think  very 
highly  of  the  Imperial  cuisine,  and  said  they  were  all 
served  with  stale  fish.  The  Duke  saw  a  good  deal  of 
Prince  Bismarck,  who  thought  him  an  excellent  re- 
presentative   of    the    English    aristocracy.     This  going 


8o  TORY    MEMORIES. 

to  Berlin  occurred  almost  immediately  after  the  death 
of  his  brother,  whom  he  succeeded  in  the  title  and 
estates.  At  Bel  voir  he  did  not  keep  up  any  great 
state  or  large  retinue  of  servants,  and  though  my  stay 
was  so  short  I  had  time  to  remark  on  the  same  pleasant 
air  of  the  country,  the  same  easy  and  familiar,  and  yet 
dignified  and  graceful,  courtesy  pervading  life  at  the 
Castle  which  DisraeH  has  described  in  '*  Coningsby." 

Later  on,  I  often  saw  the  Duke  in  London  both  at 
Cumberland  Gate  and  afterwards  at  Campden  Hill. 
It  was  at  Cumberland  Gate  that  I  first  saw  Lady 
Katharine  Manners,  a  very  pretty  girl,  then  about 
five-and-twenty.  The  last  time  I  met  her  she  was 
receiving  the  guests  at  a  garden  party  at  Campden  Hill, 
seated  under  a  large  tree,  a  dainty  vision  which  I  still 
love  to  recall. 

The  Duke  very  kindly  assisted  me  with  any  poHtical 
information  of  which  I  stood  in  need,  and  his  remarks 
on  agricultural  questions,  on  small  holdings  and  allot- 
ments, which  his  father  was  the  first  to  introduce  into 
Leicestershire,  were  always  valuable.  The  condition 
of  the  peasantry,  as  I  have  said,  had  interested  him  even 
more  than  that  of  the  factory  population.  And  there 
is  no  reason  to  doubt  that  the  views  ascribed  to  Lord 
Henry  Sidney  in  that  famous  after-dinner  conversa- 
tion in  ''  Coningsby  *'  represent  very  fairly  what  the 
late  Duke  really  felt  upon  the  same  subject.  Though 
the  family  politics  down  to  Mr.  Pitt's  time  had  been 
Whig,  none  knew  better  than  the  late  Duke  that  the 
old  Tory  party  and  the  peasantry  had  throughout  the 
eighteenth  century  been  close  allies.  The  line  between 
tenant  farmers  and  labourers  was  not  so  strictly  drawn 
as  it  has  been  since,  and  both  were  generally  included 


SOME    OTHER    TORY    STATESMEN.  8i 

under  the  head  of  peasantry.  They  were  almost  univer- 
sally staunch  Churchmen,  and  loyal  to  their  landlords. 
The  yeoman  class,  the  small  freeholders,  were  equally 
attached  to  their  old  rural  and  ecclesiastical  constitutions. 
And  in  his  sympathies  with  the  whole  body.  Lord  John 
Manners  was  identifying  himself  with  the  best  type 
of  English  Toryism.  As  a  High  Churchman,  his  sym- 
pathies were  with  Keble  and  Pusey,  and  Dr.  Routh 
and  Jones  of  Nayland  and  William  Law,  rather  than 
with  the  more  advanced  school,  which  in  time  acquired 
the  name  of  Ritualists.  In  fact,  if  anyone  had  wished 
to  describe  the  best  type  of  Tory  in  George  IL's 
time,  he  could  not  have  done  better  than  take  the 
Duke  of  Rutland  for  his  model,  though  the  family 
politics  at  that  date  were  Whig.  A  gracious  and  genial 
gentleman,  clinging,  as  far  as  possible,  to  the  kindly 
feudal  relations  between  the  lords  of  the  soil  and  the 
cultivators,  whom  it  was  their  duty  and  privilege  to 
protect ;  a  generous  and  disinterested  statesman ;  a 
man  of  culture  and  refinement ;  true  to  the  Caroline 
tradition  of  Anglicanism  and  to  the  principles  of  consti- 
tutional monarchy,  he  exhibited  almost  all  the  notes  of 
that  great  national  creed  which  the  Tories  held  when 
they  were  at  once  the  leaders  of  the  people,  the  sup- 
porters of  the  Crown,  and  the  champions  of  the 
Church. 

He  lived  into  days  which  must  to  him  have  seemed 
very  evil  days.  Authority,  property,  liberty,  all  the 
constituent  elements  of  an  orderly  and  well-balanced 
state,  derided,  threatened,  or  abandoned ;  the  very 
class  in  whom  he  had  always  taken  the  warmest  in- 
terest turning  against  his  own  order,  and  the  Ministers 
of  the  Crown  no  longer  caring  to  uphold  the  claims  of 


82  TORY   MEMORIES. 

that  religious  faith  of  which  the  Sovereign  is  the  sworn 
defender.  We  may  be  thankful  for  his  sake  that  he  was 
not  spared  to  see  the  ruin  of  the  British  Empire  and  the 
descent  of  this  ancient  kingdom  to  a  lower  rank  among 
the  nations.  Toryism  has  fought  hard  in  the  past,  and 
will  fight  hard  in  the  future  to  prevent  such  a  catas- 
trophe. The  end  no  man  can  foresee.  But  it  may 
be  that  the  greatness  of  England  will  some  day  become 
only  another  Tory  memory. 

Among  other  Tory  statesmen  with  whom  it  has  been 
my  good  fortune  to  become  acquainted,  the  late  Lord 
Carnarvon  was  the  one  whom  I  knew  best.  I  shall 
describe  a  day  at  Highclere  as  a  companion  picture  to 
the  day  at  Hughenden  and  the  day  at  Belvoir.  It  was 
in  the  month  of  July,  1884,  that  Lord  Carnarvon  was 
kind  enough  to  invite  me  to  stay  at  Highclere  from 
Saturday  to  Monday.  I  shared  with  Sir  Henry  Howorth 
a  fly  from  the  station,  which  brought  us  to  the  house 
between  five  and  six  o'clock.  We  were  received  by 
Lady  Winifred  Herbert  (now  Lady  Burghclere),  and 
presently  Lady  Carnarvon  came  in  from  the  garden  in 
a  light  summer  dress  and  garden  hat.  She  was  Lord 
Carnarvon's  second  wife,  and  then  about  eight-and- 
twenty.  I  could  have  echoed  the  words  of  Burke  in  which 
he  describes  his  first  vision  of  Marie  Antoinette.  But  her 
personal  beauty  was  perhaps  the  least  of  her  charms. 
At  dinner  I  had  the  honour  to  take  in  Lady  Winifred, 
whom  I  found  to  be  a  very  clever  girl,  highly  cultivated, 
and  well  read  in  modern  literature.  Our  conversation 
turned  chiefly  upon  books,  and  I  found  that  her  knowledge 
of  French  and  German  literature  far  exceeded  my  own. 

After  dinner  I  had  some  political  talk  with  Lord 


SOME    OTHER   TORY    STATESMEN.  83 

Carnarvon^  who  had  lately  read  some  essays  of  mine 
on  Tory  administration  from  1783  to  1881,  and  he 
seemed  to  like  best  those  on  Sir  Robert  Peel,  agreeing 
with  what  I  said  about  the  vote  of  1846  which  turned 
Sir  Robert  out  of  office.  It  was  a  repetition,  I  remarked, 
of  the  Tory  mistake  of  1830,  when  the  Tories  turned 
out  Peel  and  Wellington  in  return  for  their  having 
carried  the  Roman  CathoHc  Emancipation  Bill :  two 
triumphs  of  revenge  over  prudence  which  the  success- 
ful party  soon  had  good  reason  to  regret.  I  quoted  the 
lines  from  Virgil,  which  were  not  in  my  original  essay  : 

Tumo  tempus  erit  multo  quum  optaverit  emptum 
Intactum  Pallanta,  et  quum  spolia  ista  diemque 
Oderit 

And  he  capped  them  promptly  with  : 

Non  me,  quicunque  es,  inulto 
Victor,  nee  longum  laetabere. 

Both  the  Tories  after  1830  and  the  Conservatives 
after  1846  paid  the  penalty  of  their  blunders  by  a  long 
exclusion  from  power,  thus  leaving  the  way  open  to  a 
long  train  of  Liberal  or  Radical  legislation  fatal  to  their 
own  principles.  Lord  Carnarvon  thought  that  the 
Tories  had  been  wrong  on  both  occasions.  But  this 
was  not  the  universal  opinion  ;  and  even  so  moderate 
and  dispassionate  a  Conservative  as  the  fifteenth  Earl 
of  Derby  seemed  inclined,  during  a  conversation  which  I 
once  had  with  him,  to  defend  the  conduct  of  the  Protec- 
tionists. At  all  events,  whatever  the  effect  upon  the 
party,  he  thought  it  served  Sir  R.  Peel  quite  right,  and 
that  it  was  a  good  lesson  for  public  men  to  learn, 
namely,  that  ''  a  man  could  not  do  that  sort  of  thing 
twice.'' 


84  TORY   MEMORIES. 

On  Sunday  morning  Lord  and  Lady  Carnarvon, 
with  some  others  of  the  party,  including  myself,  walked 
down  to  the  village  church,  which  was  rebuilt  by  Lord 
Carnarvon  in  1870.  After  lunch  some  of  the  party 
strolled  down  to  a  prettily-situated  lake  surrounded  by 
rhododendrons,  which  lay  on  the  north  side  of  the  park. 
At  one  end  of  it  stood  a  picturesque  fishing  cottage, 
originally  built  in  the  sixteenth  century,  and  often  lent 
to  their  friends,  Lady  Carnarvon  said,  for  honeymoons. 
It  was  an  ideal  spot,  certainly,  for  two  very  devoted 
lovers,  and  the  water  by  moonlight  must  have  inspired 
the  dullest  of  mankind  with  a  touch  of  romance.  I 
walked  from  the  Castle  with  the  Countess,  and  found  her 
a  most  charming  companion,  gay  and  lively,  but  ready 
at  the  same  time  to  talk  on  subjects  in  which  she  sup- 
posed I  was  interested.  I  think  she  spoke  of  the  Poor 
Law,  and  was  in  favour  of  outdoor  relief. 

Both  she  herself  and  Lord  Carnarvon,  of  course, 
knew  all  about  the  two  battles  of  Newbury  which  were 
fought  in  the  immediate  neighbourhood,  and  at  one  of 
which  a  former  Earl  of  Carnarvon,  a  staunch  Cavalier, 
was  killed.  It  was  want  of  proper  communications, 
combined  with  the  rashness  and  folly  of  some  of  the 
younger  Cavalier  officers,  which  robbed  the  King  of 
victory  on  both  occasions,  as  on  many  others  during  the 
Civil  War.  They  despised  their  enemy  too  much,  and, 
like  Lord  Evandale  at  Drumclog,  brought  on  a  battle 
before  proper  dispositions  had  been  made  for  it.  A 
portrait  of  the  Earl  who  fell  at  Newbury  hung  in  the 
dining-room.  He  was  a  Dormer,  and  the  estate  came 
to  the  Herberts  through  intermarriage  with  the  Pem- 
broke family. 

I  saw  Lord  Carnarvon  several  times  after  this  at 


SOME    OTHER   TORY    STATESMEN.  85 

his  house  in  Portman  Square.  He  was  a  Tory  and,  Hke 
the  Duke  of  Rutland,  a  High  Churchman.  But  he  was 
altogether  a  different  kind  of  man.  The  Duke  was  like 
a  simple  country  gentleman.  Lord  Carnarvon  partook 
somewhat  of  the  temperament  and  tastes  of  Mr.  Glad- 
stone. He  was  a  scholar,  and  to  some  extent  a  man 
of  letters.  At  Oxford  he  took  a  first-class  in  classics 
and  he  translated  iEschylus  and  Horace.  I  could  not 
find  out  that  he  was  either  a  sportsman  or  a  naturalist. 
He  was  a  man  of  fine  taste  and  ready  sympathy,  and 
naturally  rather  given  to  ideals.  And  it  may  be  that 
these  very  virtues  affected  to  some  degree  the  quality 
of  his  statesmanship. 

I  had  to  return  to  town  that  evening,  and  took 
my  leave  with  great  reluctance,  just  as  the  whole 
party  set  out  for  the  kitchen-garden  to  eat  goose- 
berries from  the  bush. 


CHAPTER    VIII. 

SOME  OTHER  TORY  STATESMEN  (concluded). 

The  Late  Lord  Salisbury — Sir  Stafford  Northcote  (Lord  Iddesleigh) — 
Lord  Derby  (the  Fourteenth  Earl) — The  Late  Lord  Beauchamp — 
Lord  Onslow — Some  Canvassing  Experiences — Mr.  Brodrick — ^Lord 
Balfour  of  Burleigh — Lord  Randolph  Churchill — Cecil  Raikes  and 
his  Estimate  of  Lord  Beaconsfield — Lord  Brabourne — Grant-Duff — 
Mr.  Balfour. 

With  the  late  Lord  Salisbury  I  was  never  on  very 
intimate  terms.  But  we  had  been  contemporaries  at 
Oxford,  and  some  of  my  closest  friends  became  friends 
of  his  through  taking  an  active  part  in  the  Union 
debates,  in  which  Lord  Robert  Cecil,  as  he  was  then, 
gave  earnest  of  his  future  eminence.  I  saw  him  several 
times  after  he  became  a  political  leader,  and  he  often 
spoke  of  his  old  friends.  He  rendered  me  a  great  ser- 
vice by  looking  over  my  essays,  and  also  my  Selected 
Speeches  of  Lord  Beaconsfield.  Some  of  the  letters 
he  wrote  to  me  on  the  subject  will  perhaps  in- 
terest the  pubUc  at  the  present  moment.  The  following 
relates,  first  of  all,  to  the  famous  scene  in  1862,  when 
*'the  favourite  bolted'' — i.e.  when  Mr.  Walpole,  to 
Mr.  DisraeU's  great  disgust,  withdrew  a  hostile  resolu- 
tion on  Lord  Palmerston's  making  it  a  Cabinet  question ; 
and  secondly,  to  the  Reform  Bill  of  1867.  I  had  pre- 
fixed an  explanatory  note  to  each  of  the  speeches, 
ranging  from  a  few  fines  to  more  than  a  page,  and  on 
some  of  these  notes  he  made  remarks  which  possess 

86 


SOME    OTHER   TORY    STATESMEN.  87 

some  historical  value.  In  a  letter  dated  Chateau  Cecil, 
October  3rd,  1881,  after  referring  me  to  Sir  Stafford 
Northcote  for  further  information,  he  went  on  to  say  : 

Two  small  corrections  on  questions  of  fact  in  the  notes  may 
be  worth  making.  In  sheet  142  (June  4,  '62)  it  is  said  at  the  end : 
**  This  was  the  conviction  of  Lord  Derby,  by  whose  advice  Mr.  Walpole 
was  acting." 

You  may  have  good  evidence  of  this  statement,  but,  unless 
you  have,  I  should  be  disposed  to  doubt  it.  All  the  gossip  I  heard 
at  the  time  would  lead  me  to  believe  that  Mr.  Walpole  was  not  acting 
in  consonance  with  the  wishes  of  [the  then]  Lord  Derby. 

The  note  in  sheet  157  on  Reform  Bill  seems  to  imply  that  before  the 
Resolutions  were  agreed  upon  and  proposed  to  Parliament  the  Cabinet 
had  discussed,  and  had  found  itself  unable  to  agree  upon,  the  Reform 
Bill  which  was  ultimately  brought  in  and  passed.  This  was  not  the  case. 
At  the  time  the  resolutions  were  proposed  there  was  no  Bill  before 
the  Cabinet ;  and  no  definite  proposition  of  the  suffrage  had  been 
placed  before  them.  When  the  Queen's  Speech  was  delivered  the 
Resolutions  had  been  agreed  upon  in  Cabinet,  and  nothing  else  had 
been  even  proposed  to  the  Cabinet.  It  is  matter  of  little  importance, 
but  I  noted  it  merely  as  a  matter  of  fact.  The  Resolutions  disappeared 
so  rapidly  that  nobody  guessed  the  importance  which  the  Cabinet 
originally  attributed  to  them,  or  the  labour  which  it  cost  to  draw 
them  up. 

When  it  became  necessary  to  shorten  my  selections, 
I  asked  Lord  Salisbury  which  of  the  speeches  he  thought 
might  be  omitted  with  the  least  injury  to  the  whole. 
In  reply  to  this  question,  he  sent  me  the  following 
answer,  dated  Hatfield  House,  January  ist,  1882.  It 
is  interesting  as  a  Salisbury  criticism  of  Beaconsfield. 

Dear  Mr.  Kebbel,  —  I  have  been  through  the  speeches, 
which  I  send  back.  The  two  I  should  leave  out,  if  I  left  out  any, 
are  the  second  Royal  Titles  speech  ("  Whitaker")  and  that  delivered 
on  February  5,  1880,  which  is  not  a  speech  of  much  importance. 
I  have  noted  two  or  three  points.  It  was  Lord  Carnarvon — ^not  Lord 
Bath  ("  noble  Earl,"  not  "noble  Marquis  ") — whom  Lord  Beaconsfield 
was  answering  on  the  use  of  the  word  "  rectification  "  in  the  Afghan 
speech  of  1878. 


88  TORY   MEMORIES. 

In  the  Candahar  speech  last  spring,  in  speaking  of  the  subject 
which  alone  moved  Lord  Derby's  enthusiasm,  according  to  my 
recollection  he  said,  "Surrender  of  national  possessions,"  not 
policy. 

I  have  ventured  to  query  the  quotation  of  the  Spectator's  opinion 
of  Lord  B.'s  Afghan  speech.  It  is  open  to  the  same  criticism  as 
his  own  reference  to  ''Whi taker"  and  the  little  girl  of  twelve  in  the 
Royal  Titles  speech.  It  may  be  worth  while  to  look  back  to  Lord 
Granville's  speech  on  his  death  last  May.  An  incident  relating  to 
the  Candahar  speech  is  there  related  which  might  be  worth  pre- 
serving. The  speech  which  he  made  at  Berlin  was  in  English, 
and  made  an  extraordinary  effect.  His  speeches  at  Slough  and 
Aylesbury  are  worth  looking  through.  I  remember  one  on  Lord 
Ellenborough's  despatch,  at  Slough  in  1858,  and  another  on  the 
Church  at  Aylesbury,  which  were  remarkable. 

Of  the  speeches  of  which  he  suggested  the  omission, 
a  brief  notice  may  be  looked  for.  The  speech  on  the 
Royal  Titles  Bill  to  which  Lord  Salisbury  referred  was 
delivered  on  March  23rd,  1876,  and  in  it  Mr.  Disraeli 
quoted  the  evidence  of  a  little  girl  who  told  her  father 
she  had  found  the  title  ''  Empress  of  India  "  in  her 
geography  book,  which  was  forwarded  by  her  parent 
to  the  Prime  Minister.  He  also  informed  the  House 
that  a  Nonconformist  minister  had  found  the  title  in 
Whitaker's  Almanack.  This  was  stigmatised  in  the 
House  as  '*  miserable  frivolity  and  drivelling/'  and 
Lord  Salisbury  himself  does  not  seem  to  have  a  much 
better  opinion  of  it.  I  have  read  over  the  Afghan 
speech  of  December,  1878,  so  highly  praised  by  the 
Spectator  J  and  I  confess  I  do  not  see  anything  in  it  which 
should  provoke  such  language  as  some  have  applied 
to  the  Royal  Titles  speech. 

Lord  Salisbury's  statement  concerning  Lord  Derby 
and  Mr.  Walpole  in  1862  is  specially  interesting,  because 
Lord  Malmesbury  undoubtedly  leads  one  to  believe 
that  there  was  a  distinct  understanding  between  Lord 


SOME    OTHER   TORY    STATESMEN.  89 

Derby  and  Lord  Palmerston  to  the  effect  that  the 
Conservatives  would  do  nothing  to  turn  the  latter  out 
— not,  at  least,  with  the  help  of  the  Radicals,  and  they 
could  not  have  done  it  without.  If  Lord  Derby  had 
advised  Mr.  Walpole  to  act  as  he  did,  that  would  have 
accorded  with  Lord  Malmesbury's  Diary.  But  as  we 
now  learn  on  high  authority  that  he  did  not,  we  can 
only  conclude  with  Lord  Sahsbury  that  Lord  Derby 
had  only  undertaken  not  to  initiate  any  hostile  move- 
ment, still  less  to  accept  Radical  support ;  not  that  he 
pledged  himself  to  keep  Lord  Palmerston  in  office 
under  any  circumstances.  It  has  always  seemed  to  me 
a  pity  that  Lord  Derby  and  Lord  Palmerston  could  not 
manage  to  act  together.  They  had  been  members  of 
the  same  Government  for  seven  years.  Both  were 
averse  to  further  Parliamentary  reform,  and  further 
Radical  legislation,  and  both  should  have  known  that 
nothing  but  a  combination  of  Whig  and  Conservative 
could  prevent  it. 

Before  quitting  the  subject  of  the  Selected  Speeches, 
I  hope  I  shall  not  be  too  sharply  censured  if  I  sub- 
join Lord  Salisbury's   testimony   to   my   Preface: — 

Dear  Mr.   Kebbel, — I  return  the  Preface.     I  can  suggest  no 
amendment  to  it.     It  is  exceedingly  effective  and  appropriate. 

Besides  this  correspondence  on  Lord  Beaconsfield's 
speeches  I  had  some  interesting  conversations  with 
Lord  Salisbury  on  another  subject  which  has  been 
growing  in  importance  during  the  last  forty  years,  and 
by  the  middle  of  the  last  quarter  of  the  nineteenth 
century  had  been  brought  into  great  prominence  by 
Mr.  Chamberlain  and  Mr.  Jesse  CoUings — I  mean^the 
question  of  smaU  holdings,  peasant  farming,  and  peasant 


90  TORY    MEMORIES. 

proprietors.  Lord  Salisbury  approved  of  the  system  in 
theory,  but  saw  one  great  difficulty  in  reducing  it  to 
practice.  He  did  not  think,  indeed,  that  in  England, 
at  all  events,  it  would  be  a  commercial  success  even  if 
it  were  possible  to  adopt  it.  But  he  thought  its  moral 
effect  might  be  valuable,  and  he  would  not  go  so  far  as 
to  say  that  it  could  never  be  wise  to  sacrifice  economic 
principles  to  great  moral  considerations.  He  added, 
however,  that  the  great  majority  of  English  land- 
owners were  not  in  a  position  to  adopt  the  system  of 
la  petite  culture  on  a  large  scale,  and  make  it  the  rule 
instead  of  the  exception  in  EngHsh  agriculture.  If 
large  farms  were  cut  up  into  small  ones  there  would  be 
new  homesteads  and  farm  buildings  to  be  erected  on 
every  estate,  while  at  the  same  time  the  rents  paid  by 
these  small  tenants  would  be  far  more  precarious  than 
the  income  derived  from  men  of  capital  and  skill.* 

In  accordance  with  Lord  Salisbury's  suggestion,  I 
communicated  with  Sir  Stafford  Northcote,  who  wrote 
me  the  following  note  relative  to  the  Canada  Corn 
Bill,  introduced  by  Lord  Stanley  when  he  held  the 
office  of  Colonial  Secretary  in  the  Administration 
of  1841.  Lord  Stanley's  one  principle,  says  Mr. 
Saintsbury  (''Queen's  Prime  Ministers"),  was  ''pro- 
tection against  foreign,  but  not  against  colonial 
industry."  In  the  discussion  on  the  above  Bill,  Lord 
Stanley  recommended  Sir  Robert  Peel  to  adopt  Free 
Trade  with  the  Colonies  and  Protection  against  the 
rest  of  the  world.  Commenting  on  my  repetition 
of   this    statement.  Sir    Stafford,  at    that    time    Lord 

*  I  understand  that  at  the  present  time  the  Board   of   Agriculture 
is  prepared  to  lend  money  for  this  purpose. 


SOME    OTHER   TORY    STATESMEN.  91 

Iddesleigh  and  President  of  the  Board  of  Trade,  wrote 

as  follows  : — 

Sept.  14,  1885. 
My  dear  Sir, — I  remember  the  Canada  Corn  Bill  very  well. 
But  I  doubt  whether  the  idea  of  establishing  Free  Trade  with  the 
Colonies  and  Protection  as  against  foreign  nations  could  even  then 
have  been  carried  into  effect.  It  would  be  still  more  difficult  now. 
But  this  is  one  of  the  questions  which  must  sooner  or  later  come  up 
for  very  careful  examination. 

I  have  quoted  this  letter  chiefly  for  the  sake  of  the 
last  sentence  contained  in  it. 

In  looking  over  my  edition  of  the  speeches,  Sir 
Stafford  recommended  me  to  leave  out  the  speech  of 
March  17th,  1845,  in  which  Disraeli  compared  Sir  Robert 
Peel's  treatment  of  the  landed  interest  to  the  treatment 
of  his  cast-off  mistress  by  the  gentleman  who  had  got 
tired  of  her.  It  was  of  no  avail,  said  the  speaker,  for 
the  country  gentlemen  to  remonstrate.  '*  When  the 
beloved  object  has  ceased  to  charm,  it  is  in  vain  to  appeal 
to  the  feelings.  You  know  that  is  true.  Almost  every 
gentleman  has  gone  through  it.  My  honourable  friends 
reproach  the  right  honourable  gentleman.  The  right 
honourable  gentleman  does  what  he  can  to  keep  them 
quiet.  He  sometimes  takes  refuge  in  arrogant  silence, 
and  sometimes  he  treats  them  with  haughty  frigidity ; 
and  if  they  knew  anything  of  human  nature  they  would 
take  the  hint  and  shut  their  mouths.  But  they  won't, 
and  what  then  happens  ?  What  happens  in  such  cases  ? 
The  right  honourable  gentleman,  being  compelled  to 
interfere,  sends  down  his  valet,  who  says  in  the  gen- 
teelest  manner,  '  We  can  have  no  whining  here.*  " 

This  was  the  speech  which  Sir  Stafford  Northcote, 
writing  forty  years  afterwards,  advised  me  to 
omit.    The  valet   was   Sidney  Herbert,   and,   says   Sir 


92  TORY    MEMORIES. 

Stafford,  the  expression  '*  gave  great  personal  offence, 
and  has  not  even  now  been  forgotten/'  But  I  could  not 
find  it  in  my  heart  to  leave  it  out.  The  comparison 
might  not  be  in  the  best  taste,  and  the  sarcasm  lighted 
on  one  of  the  most  honourable  and  popular  men  in  the 
House  of  Commons.  But  it  is  so  exactly  true  to  life, 
and  hits  off  the  situation  so  precisely,  it  is  such  an  ex- 
cellent instance  of  the  daring  audacity  which  distin- 
guished its  renowned  author,  that  I  felt  that  in  any 
collection  of  his  speeches  it  must  find  a  place. 

Lord  Derby  himself  (the  fourteenth  Earl)  I  never 
met.  But  I  knew  that  fine  old  Tory,  Admiral  Hornby, 
who  told  me  a  good  story  about  him,  which,  although 
it  has  been  already  published,  will  bear  repeating. 
After  resigning  office  in  December,  1852,  he  ran  down 
to  Knowsley  like  a  boy  escaped  from  school.  He  im- 
mediately had  recourse  to  his  gun,  and  during  a  day's 
rabbit  shooting  gave  vent  to  his  feelings  in  the  following 
characteristic  manner.  "  Ha !  ''  he  would  cry,  as  a 
rabbit  crossed  the  ride,  '*  there  goes  Gladstone  ;  hope 
I  haven't  missed  him.  There,  do  you  see  that  big 
fellow  ?  That  is  Graham.  He'll  be  none  the  worse  for 
a  few  pellets  in  his  ribs,"  and  so  on  through  the  rest.  I 
once  told  this  to  his  son,  the  fifteenth  Earl,  who  laughed 
heartily  at  it.  He  said  he  had  never  heard  the  story, 
but  that  it  was  exactly  like  his  father. 

The  late  Lord  Beauchamp,  the  Mr.  Lygon  whom  I 
met  at  Hughenden,  and  the  father  of  the  present  Earl, 
was  one  of  those  Tories  who  greatly  approved  of  the 
Derby-Disraeli  Reform  Bill,  and  that  on  its  merits,  and 
not  merely  as  a  stroke  of  strategy.  I  once  breakfasted 
with  him  in  Belgrave  Square,  when  I  remember  he  said 


SOME    OTHER   TORY    STATESMEN.  93 

of  that  measure,  which  was  as  much  Lord  Derby's  as 
DisraeH's,  that  it  was  ''  a  fine  thing  for  the  country." 
At  that  time  the  "  Conservative  working  man  '*  was  very 
much  in  evidence.  And  many  good  judges  thought 
that  he  had  come  to  stay.  I  confess  I  was  always 
more  or  less  doubtful  on  this  point.  But  the  last  word 
has  not  been  spoken  on  the  subject  yet. 

Lord  Beauchamp  asked  me  down  to  Madresfield 
more  than  once ;  but,  unhappily,  I  was  unable  to  go. 
He  was  anxious  that  I  should  write  the  history  of  Queen 
Anne's  reign.  To  the  conduct  of  the  Tory  party  at  that 
time  he  said  justice  had  never  been  done,  and  it  was  a 
debt  which  required  to  be  paid,  *'  only,"  he  added,  with 
a  smile,  *'  don't  tell  Lord  Stanhope  it  was  I  who  said 
so."  If  I  remember  aright.  Lord  Beauchamp  referred 
more  particularly  to  the  Church  party,  of  whom  Lord 
Nottingham  was  the  head  ;  and  it  is  too  often  forgotten 
that  then,  as  now,  there  was  a  remnant  of  the  old 
Commonwealth  group  who  openly  avowed  that  their 
object  was  to  overthrow  the  Church  again  as  the 
Roundheads  and  Presbyterians  had  overthrown  her 
before.  This  excuse  for  the  severe  measures  passed  by 
Queen  Anne's  last  ministry  for  the  better  security  of  the 
Church  has  never,  I  think,  been  properly  set  out. 

Of  the  Reform  Bill  of  1885  I  remember  Mr.  W.  E. 
Forster  saying  to  me,  when  I  met  him  once  at  Lady 
Jeune's,  that  probably  the  agricultural  labourers  would 
all  vote  Liberal  at  the  first  General  Election  which  was 
just  coming  on  ;  but  that  after  that  they  would  very 
likely  be  found  on  the  Conservative  side.  This  was  a 
true  prophecy.  At  the  four  next  elections  after  1885 
they  voted  heavily  for  the  Conservatives.  Whether  they 
are  destined  to  find  out  that  the  fly  with  which  the  hook 


94  TORY    MEMORIES. 

was  baited  on  the  fifth  occasion  is  as  purely  artificial 
as  three  acres  and  a  cow  remains  to  be  seen. 

With  Lord  Onslow  I  have  had  a  good  deal 
of  correspondence  on  a  subject  in  which  he  is  much 
interested — namely,  the  condition  of  the  peasantry, 
allotments  and  small  holdings.  The  last  time  I  saw 
him  to  speak  to  was,  I  think,  in  1895,  when  the  friends 
of  the  Tory  candidate  for  Paddington  were  arranging 
their  canvass.  A  ladies'  meeting  for  the  same  purpose 
had  been  held  just  before  by  Lady  Jeune  at  her  house 
in  Harley  Street,  when  both  she  and  her  sister.  Lady 
Tweeddale,  addressed  the  company.  I  had  a  district 
assigned  me,  and  I  explored  it  with  a  lady  companion 
from  house  to  house.  But  I  found  most  of  the  small 
tradesmen  and  householders  very  indifferent  to  great 
public  questions,  and  absorbed  in  their  own  immediate 
interests,  for  which  nobody  can  blame  them.  The 
taxation  of  ground  rents,  I  remember,  was  the  great 
question  with  most  of  them.  I  found  among  them  a 
profound  disbelief  in  all  party  promises  :  one  party, 
they  said,  was  just  the  same  as  the  other.  You  got 
nothing  from  either  when  once  they  had  secured  them- 
selves in  power.  Which  way  the  men  who  thought  in 
this  manner  were  prepared  to  vote  I  was  unable  to  dis- 
cover. I  got  no  pledges  from  any  of  them  ;  a  general 
feeling  of  discontent  and  distrust  seemed  to  permeate 
the  atmosphere.  I  suppose  in  this  frame  of  mind  they 
would  be  more  likely  to  vote  Liberal  than  Conservative, 
and  still  more  likely  to  vote  against  the  Government 
than  for  it. 

An  amusing  illustration  of  what  such  men  expect 
from  a  change  of  Ministers  was  afforded  me  on  a  previ- 
ous occasion  by  a  small  greengrocer.     This  man  had  no 


SOME    OTHER   TORY    STATESMEN.  95 

grievances,  never  mentioned  ground  rents,  and  was,  in 
fact,  and  always  had  been,  a  Conservative.  Yet  what 
did  he  say  when  I  told  him  I  supposed  he  was  going  to 
vote  for  the  Tory  candidate  in  support  of  the  existing 
Government  ?  ''  Well,  sir,  I  don't  know.  I  think  a 
leetle  change  always  does  good  everywheere.''  "  What  ?  " 
I  said,  ''  a  change  from  those  who  agree  with  you  to 
those  who  differ,  and  would  upset  all  that  you  value 
and  beheve  in  ?  "  '*  Well,  sir,  I  often  think  as  a  leetle 
change  is  good.'*  And  this  was  all  I  could  get  out  of 
him.  Another  man  who  was  prepared  to  vote  Liberal 
because  his  neighbours  did,  or  from  some  other  equally 
cogent  reason,  declined  to  believe  what  the  Liberals 
themselves  said.  When  I  selected  from  their  pro- 
gramme some  projected  attack  on  any  law,  custom, 
or  institution  which  the  man  himself  really  valued, 
all  he  could  say  was,  '*  Oh,  sir,  I  ca'an't  think 
that.'' 

Another  man,  a  farmer,  gave  an  equally  interesting 
reason  for  supporting  the  Conservatives.  He  couldn't 
stand  the  peace  party,  he  said.  Here  were  our  soldiers 
*'  eating  their  heads  off."  They  ought  to  have  work  to 
do.  This  comparison  of  soldiers  during  a  long  peace 
to  hunters  during  a  long  frost,  made  in  all  seriousness, 
was,  I  thought,  eminently  characteristic  of  that  com- 
bination of  common-sense  and  stupidity  nowhere 
found  in  such  perfection  as  among  the  lower  middle 
class.  Another  man  told  me  that  his  reason  for 
voting  against  the  Tory  Government  was  that 
''  they  were  going  on  anyhow." 

Lord  Onslow's  book,  first  published  twenty  years 
ago,  entitled  *'  Landlords  and  Allotments,  or  the  His- 
tory and  Present  Condition  of  the  Allotment  System," 


96  TORY    MEMORIES. 

should  be  in  great  demand  when  we  are  threatened 
with  still  further  legislation  on  a  question  with  which 
Parliament   has   already   interfered   too   much. 

I  myself  have  contributed  my  mite  towards  the 
controversy,  and  have  published  tables  of  agricultural 
wages,  perquisites,  etc.,  drawn  from  between  twenty 
and  thirty  representative  counties.  Sir  Matthew  Ridley, 
afterwards  Lord  Ridley,  the  late  Lord  Stanhope,  and 
other  landlords  were  kind  enough  to  help  me  in  the 
matter,  and  in  the  fourth  edition,  published  in 
February,  1907,  statistics  are  brought  down  to  date. 
In  talking  with  Lord  Stanhope  five  or  six  years 
ago  on  the  same  question  in  connection  with  Small 
Holdings,  I  found  that  on  his  estate,  at  all  events, 
the  Ground  Game  Act  had  not  been  followed  by  the 
same  consequences  as  have  given  it  such  a  bad  name 
in  other  parts  of  England  where  hares  have  almost 
disappeared.  He  told  me  that  at  their  last  big  shoot 
at  Chevening  they  got  eighty  hares — which  he  thought 
very  good. 

While  on  the  subject  of  shooting,  I  may  mention 
Mr.  St.  John  Brodrick,  whose  acquaintance  I  made  at  a 
shooting  party  in  Surrey  not  very  far  from  Peper 
Harrow.  I  was  introduced  to  him  by  our  host,  and  we 
very  soon  fell  into  political  conversation.  He  was 
then  Parliamentary  Secretary  to  the  War  Office,  and  I 
thought  more  of  having  a  talk  with  him  than  of  the  busi- 
ness of  the  day.  Mr.  Brodrick  seemed  quite  willing  to 
oblige  me,  but  not  so  the  old  gamekeeper.  He  peremp- 
torily demanded  that  *'  them  two  gentlemen  should  be 
separated,*'  and  to  the  great  amusement  of  our  genial 
host,  John  Coles,  at  once  marched  us  off  in  different 
directions.     As  at  the  time  we  were  only  walking  from 


SOME    OTHER    TORY    STATESMEN.  97 

one  beat  to  another,  our  talking  could  have  done  no 
harm ;  but  it  might  have  seemed,  and  probably  did  in 
the  keeper's  eyes,  to  betray  a  frivolous  indifference  to 
the  serious  pursuit  in  which  we  were  engaged,  like 
talking  in  church,  or  cutting  jokes  at  whist. 

Lord  Balfour  of  Burleigh  also  calls  up  some  humor- 
ous memories.  He  has  often  given  me  useful  political 
information,  and  on  one  occasion  I  sat  next  him  at  the 
dinner  of  the  Cecil  Club,  and  found  him  a  most  amusing 
neighbour.  I  remember  his  describing  a  comic  incident 
which  happened,  I  think,  in  his  own  house,*  and  in  which 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Gladstone  were  the  chief  figures.  The  states- 
man and  his  wife  were  going  upstairs  from  the  hall. 
In  the  hall  two  or  three  housemaids  were  peeping  round 
the  corner  to  get  a  sight  of  the  great  man,  and  when 
Mrs.  Gladstone  saw  them  she  called  down  to  her  hus- 
band, ''  Bow,  WilUam,  bow,*'  which  accordingly  he  did 
with  his  usual  affability. 

I  met  Lord  Randolph  Churchill  twice  at  Lady 
Jeune's,  once  at  dinner  and  once  at  luncheon.  At 
dinner  he  sat  next  our  hostess,  and  I  sat  next  to  him. 
A  good  deal  of  political  chaff  was  exchanged  among  us. 
Lord  Randolph  at  that  time  either  was,  or  professed  to 
be,  a  Tory  of  the  Tories,  with  no  leaning  towards  "  con- 
cession to  the  spirit  of  the  age  *'  and  ''  all  that  sort  of 
thing."  Lady  Jeune  thought  he  was  too  strict,  and 
when  she  professed  to  think  some  relaxation  of  pure 
Toryism  was  necessary  we  dubbed  her  a  Canningite,  a 
title  which  she  laughingly  accepted.  All  this  was  in 
fun,  for  of  Toryism  rightly  understood  Canning  was  a 
faithful  representative.  On  the  second  occasion  men- 
tioned I  had  a  much  longer  talk  with  Lord  Randolph. 

*  Of  this,  however,  I  am  not  sure. 
H 


98  TORY   MEMORIES. 

After  luncheon  I  sat  by  him  in  the  drawing-room  dis- 
cussing the  pontics  of  the  day  for  nearly  two  hours.  At 
this  time  I  think  he  was  leader  of  the  Fourth  Party, 
and  the  impression  which  he  made  upon  me  was  that 
he  was  the  right  man  in  the  right  place  ;  that  is  to  say, 
that  if  we  were  to  have  a  fourth  party  at  all,  he  was  a 
fit  man  to  be  at  the  head  of  it.  He  was  eminently  a 
fighting  man,  but  whether  he  was  of  that  stuff  of  which 
statesmen  of  the  first  class  are  made  I  could  not 
make  up  my  mind  on  so  short  an  acquaintance.  He 
talked  very  frankly,  and  no  doubt  at  that  time  a 
more  vigorous  and  spirited  demonstration  from  the 
front  Opposition  Bench  could  have  turned  out  the 
Government.  The  Kilmainham  compact  and  the  death 
of  Gordon  combined  should  have  brought  any  Ministry 
to  the  ground.  Lord  Randolph  and  his  friends,  there- 
fore, had  a  good  case,  and  no  doubt  he  himself  felt 
that  on  the  Front  Bench  he  could  have  made  better 
use  of  it.  He  had  just  those  qualities  which  make  a 
man  popular  both  in  the  House  of  Commons  and  on 
the  platform — aggressive  audacity,  a  fluent  delivery, 
and  a  species  of  humour  which,  if  not  of  the  highest 
order,  was  well  suited  to  his  style.  He  had  many 
of  Lord  Beaconsfield's  gifts,  and  his  career  in  some  few 
particulars  resembled  his.  But  I  doubt  if  he  had  the 
divincB  particula  aurce  which  just  makes  the  difference 
between  the  extremely  clever  man  and  the  man  of 
genius.  However,  many  men  certainly  inferior  to  Lord 
Randolph  have  been  Prime  Ministers. 

As  I  dip  into  my  memory  other  names  come  rising 
to  the  surface,  all  of  whom  were  connected  in  one  way 
or  another  with  the  Tory  party.  Cecil  Raikes  I  knew 
well.     He  was  Postmaster-General  in  Lord  Salisbury's 


SOME    OTHER   TORY    STATESMEN.  99 

second  Administration,  and  was  always  ready  to  assist  a 
political  journalist  with  advice  or  information.  He  was 
one  of  those  Tories  who,  while  warm  admirers  and  loyal 
supporters  of  Lord  Beaconsfield,  were  inclined  to  regard 
him  rather  as  a  soldier  of  fortune.*  It  would  be  an 
insult  to  Lord  Beaconsfield's  memory  to  compare  him 
with  Dugald  Dalgetty,  who,  before  joining  either  Cava- 
lier or  Roundhead,  desired  to  know  firstly  "  on  which 
side  his  services  would  be  in  most  honourable  request ; 
and,  secondly,  whilk  is  a  corollary  of  the  first,  by  whilk 
party  they  are  most  likely  to  be  most  gratefully  re- 
quited.'' Yet  if  Lord  Beaconsfield  was  really  a  soldier 
of  fortune  it  is  with  such  men  that  we  must  rank 
him.  Now,  we  must  remember  that  when  Lord 
Beaconsfield  first  entered  Parliament  in  1837  ^^  a  sup- 
porter of  Sir  Robert  Peel,  the  Whigs  were  more  in  need 
of  support  than  the  Tories.  Sir  James  Graham  and 
Mr.  Stanley  had  carried  their  biting  tongues  and 
their  brilliant  wit  to  the  Conservative  camp.  Mr. 
Gladstone  was  the  hope  and  the  pride  of  the  younger 
generation  of  Tories.  In  Lord  Lincoln,  Sidney  Herbert, 
and  Mr.  Cardwell,  Peel  had  most  able  lieutenants. 
And  had  Disraeli  chosen  to  offer  his  sword  to  the  Whigs, 
he  would  have  been  welcomed  and  rewarded. 

On  the  other  hand,  as  he  himself  often  said,  the  Jew 
is  naturally  a  Tory,  though  ill-treatment  had  made  him  a 
Liberal.  All  Disraeli's  proclivities  lay  in  the  direction  of 
Toryism,  and  though  no  doubt  personally  he  had  more 
in  common  with  Lord  Palmerston  than  with  Sir  Robert 
Peel,  yet  as  Palmerston  acted  with  the  Whigs,  and 
supported  their  principles  and  traditions,  which  Dis- 
raeli abhorred,  he  could  only  have  joined  their  ranks 

*  See  ante,  p.  65. 


100  TORY   MEMORIES. 

from  purely  selfish  motives,  which  are  not  necessary  to 
explain  his  alliance  with  the  Tories.  All  this  I  often 
said  to  Raikes.  But  the  opposite  idea  had  taken  pos- 
session of  his  mind,  and  Lord  Beaconsfield,  almost  to 
the  last,  continued  to  pay  the  penalty  of  his  early  con- 
nection with  the  Radicals,  although  he  had  demonstrated 
over  and  over  again  that  he  was  only  actuated  by 
hostility  to  the  Whigs,  and  not  at  all  by  any  love  of 
Radical  or  revolutionary  measures.  But  the  prejudice 
so  created  died  hard,  or  rather  did  not  die  at  all ;  and 
Raikes,  I  think,  remained  imbued  with  it  all  the  time 
I  knew  him.  I  have  heard  him  say,  too,  that  he  really 
thought  Lord  Salisbury  an  abler  man  than  Lord 
Beaconsfield. 

Another  Minister  who  began  as  a  Tory,  changed 
into  a  Whig,  and  reverted  to  his  original  form  in  the 
latter  part  of  his  life  was  KnatchbuU-Hugessen,  after- 
wards Lord  Brabourne,  Under-Secretary  for  the  Colonies 
in  Mr.  Gladstone's  first  Administration.  I  knew  him 
at  Oxford  when,  like  Lord  Robert  Cecil,  he  was  a  star 
at  the  Union.  In  those  days  he  was  a  hot  Tory  and 
Protectionist,  and  as  I  knew  several  of  his  Union  friends, 
I  often  met  him  at  their  wine  parties,  and  used  to  hear 
them  talk  of  going  down  to  the  Union  if  it  were  a  debate 
night,  as  if  it  were  the  House  of  Commons.  He  was  a 
very  handsome  man,  and  a  popular  though  not  a  power- 
ful speaker.  He  married  a  Miss  Southwell,  the  sister  of 
one  of  my  well  beloved  college  contemporaries,  Marcus 
Southwell  of  Exeter,  whose  other  sister  married  Dimsdale 
of  Corpus,  afterwards  Baron  Dimsdale,  a  well-known 
figure  in  the  House  of  Commons,  and  an  intimate  friend 
of  mine  to  the  day  of  his  death.  The  two  sisters  were 
both   pretty    girls,  and  came  up   to    Oxford    at  Com- 


SOME    OTHER   TORY    STATESMEN.         loi 

memoration,  where  they  won  the  hearts  of  two 
conspicuous  Oxford  Tories,  and  they  well  deserve  a 
place  in  Tory  memories. 

Sir  Mountstuart  Grant -Duff  was  not  a  Tory  Minister, 
nor  a  Tory  at  all.  But  I  cannot  omit  mention  of 
him,  as  our  acquaintance  dated  from  Oxford  days. 
He,  too,  was  a  light  at  the  Union,  principally  on 
foreign  politics.  He  had  travelled  more  than  most 
undergraduates  in  those  days,  and  had  '*  heard  the  war- 
drum  throb  in  the  vineyards  of  Pesth.''  He  was  Under- 
Secretary  of  State  for  India  and  afterwards  for  the 
Colonies.  I  often  met  him  in  London  Society,  and  we 
always  had  a  genial  talk.  We  differed,  of  course,  in 
politics.  But  on  one  thing  we  always  agreed.  We  had 
a  mutual  friend  at  Oxford  in  George  David  Boyle, 
who  died  Dean  of  Salisbury.  The  first  question 
asked  by  one  or  other  of  us  as  often  as  we  met  was, 
*'  Have  you  seen  Boyle  lately  ?  "  to  which  the  invari- 
able answer  would  be,  after  *'  Yes  ''  or  **No,"  as  might 
happen,  *'  How  is  it  he  is  not  a  bishop  yet  ?  Nature 
clearly  meant  him  for  one.'*  He  was  a  tall,  handsome, 
stately  man  with  a  nameless  episcopal  air  about  him, 
and  Grant-Duff  and  myself  had  always  agreed  that 
Nature  would  be  much  wronged  if  Boyle  were  not  pro- 
moted to  the  Bench. 

The  reader  may  be  surprised  that  I  have  said 
nothing  as  yet  of  Mr.  Balfour.  The  reason  is  partly 
that  my  acquaintance  with  him  is  of  later  date,  partly 
that  the  political  conversations  in  which  he  was  kind 
enough  to  indulge  me  related  to  events  and  individuals 
which  can  only  be  touched  upon  in  these  pages  with 
considerable  reserve.  Before  he  became  Prime  Minister, 
and  indeed  ever  since  I  have  been  engaged  on  political 


102  TORY   MEMORIES. 

work  which  made  it  necessary  that  from  time  to  time  I 
should  receive  some  assistance  from  headquarters,  by 
Mr.  Balfour  such  assistance  has  been  always  most 
readily  and  most  kindly  given.  One  thing  he  told 
me  some  three  years  ago,  I  think,  which  has  received 
abundant  illustration  since.  I  remember  asking  him, 
a  propos  of  some  Government  Bill  which  the  Oppo- 
sition were  very  hotly  contesting — I  think  it  was  the 
Defaulting  Authorities  Bill — why  he  had  not  used  the 
closure  more  frequently,  as  the  factious  and  obstruc- 
tive tactics  with  which  the  measure  was  encountered 
would  have  abundantly  justified  recourse  to  it.  He 
said  he  did  not  wish  to  furnish  too  many  precedents 
for  the  employment  of  a  weapon  which  would  be 
sure  to  be  turned  against  the  Unionists  whenever 
their  opponents  came  in.  It  would  not  be  very  long 
before  they  did,  he  thought ;  and  then  he  was  sure 
they  would  bring  in  some  most  ''  disastrous  measures.'* 
They  have  brought  in  most  disastrous  measures,  and 
they  have  made  unsparing  use  of  the  guillotine.  Mr. 
Balfour's  moderation  did  not  avail  him.  The  Radicals 
couldn't  have  used  it  with  greater  severity  if  he  had 
given  them  double  the  number  of  precedents.  But  I 
was  struck  by  the  tone  of  his  remarks.  He  seemed  to 
think  that  the  Unionists  had  outstayed  their  welcome ; 
and  if  he  did  not  foresee  such  an  overwhelming  majority 
as  the  Radicals  finally  secured,  it  was  pretty  clear  to 
me  that  he  foresaw  a  Unionist  defeat.  He  evidently 
beheved  that  the  English  people  were  tired  of  hearing 
Aristides  called  just. 

On  a  later  occasion,  after  the  Fiscal  question  had 
come  to  the  front,  he  spoke  briefly  about  the  state  of  the 
party.     He  seemed  much  depressed,  not  at  the  prospect 


SOME    OTHER   TORY    STATESMEN.         103 

of  losing  office,  for  that  seemed  far  from  unwelcome 
to  him,  but  rather  at  the  conduct  of  friends  and 
colleagues  whose  defection  it  was  easy  to  see  had 
caused  him  much  pain.  But  he  said  next  to  nothing, 
and  it  was  only  by  a  word  dropped  casually  here  and 
there  that  I  obtained  a  glimpse  into  the  state  of  his 
mind.  However,  that  is  all  past  and  gone.  Adversity 
has  reunited  those  who  found  that,  large  as  the  Unionist 
party  might  be,  there  was  no  room  in  it  for  dissension. 
We  should  probably  have  had  a  Liberal  Government 
in  office  if  the  Fiscal  question  never  had  arisen,  but  not 
with  the  enormous  majority  which  it  now  commands. 
Dissenters,  Free  Traders,  and  Socialists,  swelling  the 
ranks  of  the  regular  Liberal  party,  formed  a  combina- 
tion too  powerful  to  be  resisted  ;  but  Mr.  Balfour  saw 
through  the  game  in  a  moment.  He  saw  that  the 
Government,  while  obliged  to  be  civil  to  all  groups  in 
turn,  were  really  bound  hand  and  foot  to  the  Dis- 
senters; and  that  behind  all  the  inextricable  compli- 
cations of  the  Education  Bill,  lay  one  single  and  con- 
sistent purpose :  the  destruction  of  the  Church  of 
England — not  perhaps  really  desired  by  the  occupants 
of  the  Ministerial  coach,  but  openly  and  honestly  pro- 
claimed as  the  one  object  of  their  exertions  by  those 
who  have  their  shoulders  to  the  wheel. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

TORY  MEMBERS  I  HAVE  KNOWN. 

Baron  Dimsdale — Origin  of  the  Title — The  Baron  as  a  Party  Man — A 
Stohd  Audience — Convivial  Electioneering — Lord  Glamis  and  the 
Memory  of  William  III. — An  Elegant  Metaphor — Baron  Dimsdale 
and  his  Tenants — Mr.  Albert  Pell — A  Retort  upon  Lord  Curzon — 
Pell's  Views  on  the  Poor  Law — Sewell  Read — Sir  George  Baden- 
Powell — The  Education   Bill  of   1902 — Mr.   Balfour's  Frankness. 

One  of  my  most  intimate  friends  among  Tory  members 
of  the  House  of  Commons  was  Baron  Dimsdale,  member 
first  of  all  for  Hertford,  and  after  1885  for  the  Herts 
division  of  that  county.  He  was  a  son  of  the  fourth 
baron,  whose  ancestor  had  received  this  title  from  the 
Empress  Catherine  of  Russia,  1762.  The  Dimsdales  were 
an  old  county  family,  but  the  first  baron  was  a  physician 
famous  for  his  treatment  of  small-pox ;  and  he  was 
sent  for  by  the  Empress  to  inoculate  her  for  that  terrible 
disease.  He  went,  as  one  may  say,  with  a  rope  round 
his  neck,  for  what  would  have  happened  to  him  had 
the  Empress  died  under  his  hands  it  is  not  difficult  to 
guess.  Even  as  it  was,  his  life  was  in  danger  from  the 
jealousy  and  hostility  inspired  by  a  foreigner  being 
summoned  to  her  bedside ;  and  the  Empress  knew  it, 
for  she  enjoined  him  to  depart  secretly,  and  had  relays  of 
post  horses  placed  in  readiness  for  him  all  along  the  road 
till  he  got  beyond  the  Russian  frontier.  He  was  rewarded 
with  a  title,  a  large  sum  of  money,  and  costly  furs,  which 
in  Russia  only  the  royal  family  were  allowed  to  wear. 

104 


TORY  MEMBERS  I  HAVE  KNOWN.   105 

All  this  I  heard  at  different  times  from  my  friend's 
lips,  and  I  had  plenty  of  time  ;  for  we  were  contem- 
poraries at  Oxford,  though  not  at  the  same  college. 
He  was  a  gentleman  commoner  of  Corpus,  and  pre- 
pared himself  for  the  House  of  Commons  like  so 
many  others  of  the  same  standing — Cecil,  KnatchbuU- 
Hugessen,  Ward  Hunt,  Portal,  Sclater-Booth  (after- 
wards Lord  Basing),  and  others — by  assiduous  attend- 
ance at  the  Union.  Dimsdale  rather  cultivated  a  florid 
style  of  speaking,  and  affected — it  was  certainly  not 
natural  to  him — a  slightly  pompous  delivery.  His  chief 
dehghts  at  Oxford  were  oratory  and  hospitality.  His 
Httle  dinners  at  *'  The  Cross  *'  were  well  known  to  a 
select  few ;  and  afterwards  in  London  he  exercised  the 
same  noble  virtue  with  generous  frequency.  Some- 
times he  invited  his  friends  to  Verey's,  sometimes  to  the 
Old  Blue  Posts  in  Cork  Street,  which  was  almost  the  last 
of  the  old  taverns  frequented  by  bons  vivants,  and  was 
famous  for  its  beef-steaks  and  its  old  port  wine  at  i6s. 
a  bottle  :  a  fitting  house  for  the  symposium  of  fine  old 
Tories  such  as  gathered  round  Dimsdale's  table.  He 
continued  this  practice  all  his  life.  I  have  once  or  twice 
dined  with  hiih  at  the  Oxford  and  Cambridge  Club  ; 
but  after  he  became  a  member  of  the  Carlton,  we  always 
dined  at  some  tavern  or  restaurant.  He  could  not  ask 
strangers  to  dinner  at  the  Carlton.  But  he  gave  them 
such  refreshments  as  were  lawful,  and  I  have  a  vivid 
recollection  of  sitting  with  him  on  the  ottoman  in  the 
middle  of  the  hall  at  that  club,  each  of  us  with  a  large 
glass  of  foaming  brandy-and-soda  in  his  hand,  the 
admired  of  all  beholders. 

He  entered  the  House  of  Commons  as  member  for 
Hertford    in    1866,    when    that    borough  returned  two 


io6  TORY   MEMORIES. 

members.  After  the  Reform  Bill  of  1867  it  returned 
only  one,  and  Baron  Dimsdale  gave  up  his  seat  to  Mr. 
Balfour.  He  re-entered  the  House,  however,  as  member 
for  the  Hertford  division  of  the  county  in  1885,  ^  seat 
he  retained  till  1892,  when  he  retired  from  public  life. 
He  was  missed  by  his  own  party,  and  perhaps  by  many 
others.  ''  You  always  saw  his  broad  back,'*  said  Mr. 
Pell,  ''  in  front  of  you,  going  into  the  right  Lobby.''  He 
was  a  devout  party  man,  and  indeed  party  loyalty  was 
with  him  a  species  of  religion.  All  the  manoeuvres  by 
which  either  votes  or  seats  are  won  were  familiar  to 
him,  and  in  his  eyes  the  end  justified  the  means,  no 
matter  what  they  were.  He  told  me  once  that  one 
Saturday  night  at  Hertford  he  cleared  off  the  whole 
remaining  stock  of  the  principal  fishmonger ;  and  he 
used  to  speak  with  admiration  of  a  nobleman  famous 
for  his  electioneering  tactics,  '^  who  loved  a  job  for  its  own 
sake."  While  he  was  in  Parliament  I  used  to  hear  a 
good  deal  more  of  the  inner  life  of  that  assembly  than  I 
have  heard  since.  I  beheve  that  his  anecdotes  chiefly 
bore  reference  to  the  subject  of  intoxication,  of  which, 
as  it  is  now  obsolete  among  our  respectable  representa- 
tives, no  more  need  be  said. 

I  helped  Dimsdale,  or  was  supposed  to  help  him,  in 
his  canvassing  in  1885.  I  know  I  had  to  make  two 
speeches  to  political  meetings,  and  if  they  did  anybody 
any  good,  I  should  be  surprised  and  dehghted  to 
hear  it.  This  was  the  first  election  in  which  the 
peasantry  had  votes,  and  I  had  an  object  lesson  which  I 
am  not  likely  to  forget.  After  dining  with  Dimsdale 
and  one  of  his  sons  at  Hitchin,  we  drove  out  to  Luton, 
where  a  meeting  of  labourers  was  to  be  held,  I  suppose 
in  the  schoolroom.     We — the   upper  three- — sat   on   a 


TORY  MEMBERS  I  HAVE  KNOWN.        107 

raised  platform,  and  looked  down  upon  a  sea  of  white 
smock  frocks  and  of  upturned  faces,  neither  of  which 
moved  a  muscle  or  so  much  as  winked  throughout  the 
whole  proceedings.  The  listeners,  if  they  did  listen,  were 
most  quiet  and  orderly,  partly  it  may  be,  because  they 
did  not  understand  a  single  word  of  what  was  said ;  and 
I  know  I  kept  thinking  all  the  time  of  Tennyson's 
Northern  Farmer  and  the  Parson's  sermon  :  *'  I  niver 
knawed  what  a  meaned,"  etc.  When  my  turn  came  to 
speak,  I  felt  I  might  as  well  be  addressing  myself  to 
empty  benches  as  to  full  ones.  The  men  stared  straight 
before  them,  and  gave  no  sign  of  intelligence  whatever. 
It  was  disheartening,  and  yet  I  daresay  I  was  quite 
wrong.  All  who  know  the  English  agricultural  labourer 
well  are  aware  that  of  all  the  undemonstrative  human 
beings  who  ever  existed,  he  is  perhaps  the  most  so,  if  we 
except  a  small  class  who  are  at  the  top  of  the  social  ladder 
of  which  he  is  at  the  bottom.  Extremes  meet  in  this 
respect  as  in  many  others.  They  may  all  the  time  have 
been  considering  in  their  own  minds  nice  distinctions, 
deep  political  problems,  and  the  great  blessings  of  the 
existing  British  Constitution.  But  they  did  not  look  as 
if  they  were.  And  I  cannot  pretend  that  it  was  a 
stimulating  meeting  to  speak  to  :  I  could  only  console 
myself  with  the  reflection  that  Toryism  is  not  an 
emotional  creed. 

We  drove  back  to  Hitchin,  where  a  sumptuous 
supper  had  been  provided  for  us — soup,  fish,  roast 
pheasants,  champagne,  and  cigars,  and  whisky-and- 
water  to  wind  up  with,  so  that  it  was  nearly  one  o'clock 
in|the  morning  before  we  got  to  bed.  If  all  canvassing 
were  like  this,  I  thought  I  shouldn't  so  much  mind  a 
good  deal  more  of  it.     The  speaking  was  a  bore,  no 


io8  TORY   MEMORIES. 

doubt ;  but  there  was  balm  in  Gilead  whenever  Dims- 
dale  was  at  hand. 

Another  electioneering  banquet  took  place  either 
at  Hertford  or  at  Hitchin,  I  am  not  certain  which,  and 
again  I  had  to  stand  up  and  say  something.  Now,  as 
public  speaking  is  not  my  strong  point,  and  I  never  can 
get  through  it  without  a  feeUng  that  I  must  be  boring 
my  audience  even  more  than  I  am  boring  myself,  the 
sacrifice  I  made  in  the  cause  of  friendship  may  be 
imagined.  However,  one  can't  go  on  eating  a  man*s 
dinners,  drinking  his  wine,  and  shooting  his  game  with- 
out making  him  some  kind  of  return  ;  and  I  thought, 
and  think  still,  that  these  Uttle  oratorical  contributions 
of  which  he  seemed  to  think  so  much  were  a  cheap  price 
to  pay  for  the  many  pleasures  for  which  I  was  indebted 
to  him. 

At  this  last-mentioned  dinner  I  sat  next  to  Lord 
Glamis,  the  eldest  son  of  Lord  Strathmore,  who  related 
to  me  an  incident  which  I  hope  he  will  not  mind 
my  mentioning  again.  He  said  that  when  serving  with 
his  regiment  in  Ireland,  he  was  invited  to  a  public  dinner, 
where,  of  course,  the  glorious  and  immortal  memory 
of  William  III.  was  duly  proposed.  '*  Now,"  said  Lord 
Glamis,  ''  what  was  I  to  do  ?  Our  family  had  always 
been  on  the  other  side.  I  could  not  possibly  drink 
that  toast,''  so  I  think  he  said  that  though  he  stood  up 
with  the  rest  in  honour  of  the  dehverer,  like  Naaman  in 
the  House  of  Rimmon,  and  raised  his  glass  to  his  lips, 
he  put  it  down  untasted.  I  was  much  interested  in 
this  curious  Jacobite  survival.  It  was  something,  I 
thought,  to  have  caught  across  the  gulf  of  centuries  the 
lingering  fragrance  of  the  White  Rose. 

Dimsdale's  love  of  speaking   often   drew  him  into 


TORY  MEMBERS  I  HAVE  KNOWN.         109 

those  debating  societies  of  which  many  existed  in  those 
days  and  do  perhaps  still  in  various  quarters  of  the  town. 
In  Fleet  Street  there  was  the  Temple  Forum,  and  in  the 
immediate  vicinity  Cogers'  Hall.  Then  there  was 
another,  I  fancy,  a  little  further  west.  I'm  not  sure  that 
it  did  not  meet  in  the  hall  of  one  of  the  minor  inns 
— Lyon's  Inn,  perhaps.  But  I  went  there  with  Dimsdale 
in  his  younger  days,  when  he  spoke  to  a  very  Radical 
audience  in  a  strain  of  superfine  Toryism,  which  galled 
one  honest  gentleman  so  much  that  he  described  the 
offender  as  one  who  ''  grovelled  in  his  own  slime."  This 
elegant  metaphor,  so  far  from  offending  the  orator  who 
had  provoked  it,  amused  him  so  much  that  whenever 
debating  clubs  were  mentioned  he  always  asked  if  we 
didn't  remember  the  evening  when  So-and-so  said — 
speaking  very  slowly  with  his  chin  a  little  tucked  in — 
that  "  I  grovelled  in  my  own  slime."  It  was  not  for 
want  of  practice  that  Dimsdale  didn't  make  a  greater 
figure  as  a  debater  in  Parliament.  But  his  voice  was 
not  strong,  and  I  think  he  only  cared  to  speak  when  he 
had  got  up  a  subject  for  himself. 

I  stayed  with  him  two  or  three  times  at  Essendon, 
when  he  showed  me  all  the  presents  the  Empress  of 
Russia  had  given  his  ancestor,  costly  furs,  among  them 
that  of  the  black  fox,  worn  only  by  the  Imperial  family. 
The  baroness,  as  just  mentioned,  was  the  sister  of  my  old 
Oxford  friend,  Marcus  Southwell.  The  Miss  Dimsdales 
were  there,  and  the  eldest  son,  then,  I  think,  at  Eton. 
The  family  had  possessed  Essendon  for  some  generations. 
They  were  an  offshoot  from  a  knightly  family  in  Essex, 
and  there  was  no  considerable  estate  immediately  round 
the  house,  but  the  baron  had  other  property  just  where 
the   three    counties    of   Hertfordshire,    Cambridgeshire, 


no  TORY    MEMORIES. 

and  Essex  meet.  Here  he  used  to  come  down  sometimes 
and  stay  with  his  agent,  and  dine  with  his  tenants. 
There  was  one  old  fellow,  I  remember,  who  always  wore 
white  cord  breeches  and  was  quite  one  of  the  old  school. 
I  dined  at  his  house  with  the  baron  and  his  son,  and 
another  Tory  farmer,  also  the  baron's  tenant,  whose 
Toryism  did  not  rest  on  quite  so  firm  a  basis  as  his  land- 
lord's. Our  host  gave  us  a  capital  dinner,  and  any 
amount  of  port  wine  afterwards,  under  the  influence 
of  which  we  discussed  the  whole  round  of  political  ques- 
tions of  the  day  and  the  Irish  Church  in  particular. 
We  all  made  speeches,  two  or  three  apiece  ;  but  whether 
we  succeeded  in  persuading  the  wavering  farmer  to  take 
our  view  of  Irish  DisestabHshment  I  rather  doubt. 

The  baron  himself  was  no  sportsman,  and  while  the 
rest  of  us  were  shooting  he  amused  himself  by  making 
a  round  of  his  farmhouses,  and  lunching  substantially  at 
each.  Those  were  the  days  before  the  agricultural 
depression  began,  when  the  farmers  were  prosperous 
and  jolly,  and  they  liked  a  landlord  like  Dimsdale,  who 
could  make  himself  at  home  with  them.  In  the  bad 
years  since  those  days,  I  am  sorry  to  say  that  some  of 
those  who  entertained  us  so  hospitably  came  to  grief. 
Mr.  Arch,  too,  and  his  agents  have  been  busy  in  that 
part  of  the  country,  and  Toryism,  I  fear,  no  longer  stands 
where  it  did. 

Some  other  electioneering  experiences  on  the  Tory 
side  I  had  previously  enjoyed  in  my  own  native  county, 
Leicestershire.  Mr.  Albert  Pell,  who  sat  for  South 
Leicestershire,  now  the  Harborough  Division,  from 
1868  to  1885,  was  an  old  friend  of  ours,  and  in 
the  autumn  of  1867,  when  Mr.  Packe  retired,  Mr. 
Pell     came    forward     in     his     place.      After    a   sharp 


TORY  MEMBERS  I  HAVE  KNOWN.   iii 

contest  he  was  defeated  by  Tertius  Paget,  a  Leicester 
banker  with  great  influence  in  the  county.  But 
at  the  General  Election  of  1868  Lord  Curzon  and 
Mr.  Pell  were  returned,  the  latter  just  beating  Paget 
by  the  narrow  majority  of  25.  Mr.  Pell  had  married 
the  only  daughter  of  Sir  Henry  Halford,  who  sat  for 
the  county  from  1832  to  1857,  when  he  was  suc- 
ceeded by  Lord  Curzon,  who  kept  the  seat  till  the 
death  of  his  father.  Lord  Howe,  in  1870,  when 
he  was  replaced  by  Mr.  Heygate.  After  their  mar- 
riage Mr.  and  Mrs.  Pell  hved  for  a  time  at  Guils- 
borough,  in  Northamptonshire,  and  moved  after- 
wards to  Hazelbeach  House,  near  Maidwell,  and  about 
half-way  between  Northampton  and  Harborough.  Here 
I  visited  him  on  two  occasions,  in  October,  1867,  and 
again  in  November  or  December,  1868.  Pell  himself 
was  a  farmer,  and  occupied  one  of  the  Wistow  farms 
for  several  years.  He  was  an  excellent  agricultural 
representative  and  retained  the  confidence  of  the  Leices- 
tershire farmers  up  to  the  last.  Even  in  1880,  when, 
as  I  heard  a  farmer  say  afterwards  at  the  Farmers'  Club, 
they  wished  to  frighten  the  landlords  a  httle  bit,  Pell 
kept  his  seat,  though  Paget  was  returned  at  the  head  of 
the  poll  and  Heygate  was  dismissed. 

We  had  great  fun  over  the  election  of  1868.  At  that 
time  I  was  staying  at  Hazelbeach,  and  a  party  was 
made  up  to  drive  over  to  Lutterworth,  where  the  two 
Conservative  candidates.  Lord  Curzon  and  Mr.  Pell, 
were  to  address  a  pubHc  meeting.  Mrs.  Pell  and  her 
sister-in-law,  Mrs.  John  Halford,  Lady  Isham  from 
Lamport,  John  Halford,  and  myself  made  up  the  party, 
and  as  soon  as  we  got  out  of  the  carriage  at  Lutter- 
worth we  commenced  to  make  our  way  on  foot  to  the 


112  TORY    MEMORIES. 

market-place,  where  the  two  orators  were  to  address 
the  people  from  a  cart.  As  we  walked  along  the  streets, 
the  three  ladies  in  front,  and  John  Halford  and  myself 
behind,  we  certainly  didn't  court  the  popularity  of  the 
mob.  The  streets  were,  of  course,  rather  crowded,  and 
wherever  there  was  an  open  space  on  the  walls  invita- 
tions to  vote  for  Pell  and  Curzon,  or  else  for  Paget,  who 
was  fighting  for  the  seat  which  he  won  the  year  before, 
were  posted  up  in  chalk.  The  ladies,  as  they  walked  along, 
freely  rubbed  out  every  inscription  in  favour  of  Paget, 
regardless  of  the  black  looks  which  they  encountered 
from  some,  or  the  remonstrances  audibly  addressed  to 
them  by  others.  A  group  of  half  a  dozen  roughs 
slouched  along  in  the  middle  of  the  street  a  yard  or 
two  behind,  and  gave  vent  to  their  feelings  by  declar- 
ing that  '*  some  folks  'ud  go  to  prison  if  they  did  that.'* 
But  they  confined  their  indignation  to  words,  and  we 
reached  the  platform  uninjured.  The  careless  con- 
fidence and  smiling  faces  of  the  three  offenders,  unable 
to  conceive  the  possibility  of  anybody  venturing  to 
molest  them,  and  regarding  the  whole  thing  as  an  excel- 
lent joke,  had  perhaps  the  effect  upon  the  bystanders 
which  such  an  attitude  generally  produces.  It  has  its 
effect  upon  bulls  and  dogs,  and  if  the  '*  souters  *'  at  Lut- 
terworth meditated  any  further  demonstrations  they 
wisely  forbore,  and  reserved  themselves  for  the  speeches, 
when  they  could  shout  to  their  hearts'  content. 

After  Mr.  Pell  had  spoken.  Lord  Curzon  addressed 
himself  to  a  subject  which  he  no  doubt  thought  would 
come  home  to  their  feelings  very  closely.  It  was  the 
time  of  the  cattle  plague,  and  the  agricultural  interest 
was  pressing  for  restrictions  on  importation.  Lord 
Curzon  drew  a  gloomy  picture  of  what  would  happen  if 


TORY  MEMBERS  I  HAVE  KNOWN.         113 

a  Liberal  Government  came  in,  which  would  certainly 
refuse  all  such  precautions,  leaving  the  disease  to  spread 
till  our  herds  of  cattle  were  decimated.  "  That  is  what 
you  have  to  expect/'  said  his  lordship,  ''  and  then  youll 
none  of  you  get  any  more  roast  beef  and  plum  pudding 
on  Sundays.'*  ''  Oi  don't  get  nun,  even  nyow/'  cried  one 
from  the  crowd  in  a  strong  Leicestershire  accent,  amid 
the  inextinguishable  roars  of  all  who  heard  him.  He 
was  evidently  the  local  wag.  He  was  in  his  shirt- 
sleeves, with  his  arms  up  to  the  elbow  thrust  under  a 
large  leather  apron.  Whether  he  was  a  cobbler  or  a 
blacksmith  I  could  not  quite  determine ;  most  likely 
he  was  the  former,  for  by  the  operation  of  some  law 
hitherto  undiscovered  by  philosophers,  cobblers  are  more 
prone  to  politics  than  blacksmiths. 

We  drove  back  to  Hazelbeach  to  dinner ;  and  I 
spent  a  pleasant  evening  talking  over  old  times  with 
Mrs.  Pell.  The  next  day  I  was  introduced  to  her  cats, 
of  which  she  had  a  great  number  of  a  very  choice  breed. 
Most  of  them  were  chained  up  in  a  row  of  little  kennels, 
and  they j^  had  become  almost  as  famous  as  Dandie 
Dinmont's  terriers.  In  all  parts  of  the  country,  if  you 
noticed  a  very  long-haired  grey  cat,  as  likely  as  not  you 
would  be  told  that  it  came  from  Hazelbeach.  She 
realised  high  prices  for  some  of  them. 

I  remember  other  election  scenes  in  the  same 
neighbourhood.  There  was  a  bye-election  in  South 
Leicestershire  in  1870,  when  Lord  Curzon  succeeded 
to  the  peerage,  and  party  spirit  ran  very  high. 
The  contest  lay  between  Heygate  (Tory),  and  Paget 
(Liberal),  the  former  being  returned  by  a  majority  of 
seven  hundred.  The  mob  were  very  violent.  A  rela- 
tion of  mine  drove  voters  into  Lutterworth  from  the 


114  TORY    MEMORIES. 

neighbouring  villages,  and  some  scenes  occurred  worthy 
of  being  described  by  Lever.  I  remember  their  carry- 
ing an  old  bedridden  clergyman  to  the  poll.  At  first 
he  refused  to  go — no  wonder  ! — ^but  at  length,  having 
huddled  on  some  clothes,  he  consented  to  be  carried 
downstairs  and  placed  in  the  carriage.  My  enter- 
prising relative  drove  up  to  the  polling  place  at  full 
gallop,  scattering  the  crowd  in  all  directions  amid  a 
storm  of  yells  and  hisses.  However,  they  got  their 
man  out  in  safety  ;  and  while  the  driver  remained  upon 
the  box  pelted  with  mud  and  other  missiles,  the  owner 
of  the  vehicle  and  a  farmer  friend  who  came  with  them 
made  a  bridge  with  their  backs  for  the  parson,  while 
another  friend  led  him  by  the  hand  to  record  his  vote. 
They  then  drove  him  home  and  brought  some  more 
back,  and  it  all  finished  up  with  a  big  fight  in  the 
evening,  when  the  mob  tried  to  storm  the  Hind  Hotel, 
where  the  Tories  were  refreshing  themselves  after 
their  exertions.  They  were  beaten  off  by  the  besieged, 
though  not  without  considerable  difficulty,  for  the 
assailants  were  very  savage,  and  many  heavy  blows 
were  given  and  taken.  Of  the  two  gentlemen  who 
carried  the  parson  on  their  backs  one  had  several  teeth 
knocked  out,  while  the  other  had  a  nose  swollen  to  the 
size  of  a  Jargonelle  pear.  The  coachman  got  a  black 
eye.  An  unoffending  "  blue  '*  gentleman  who  was 
looking  out  at  the  scene  from  his  own  doorway  was 
gently  tapped  on  the  proboscis  by  an  indignant  '*  green  " 
with  a  fist  like  a  cricket  ball,  and  sent  back  into  the 
interior  with  anguish  on  his  countenance. 

The  Tories,  where  deficient  in  numbers,  sometimes 
made  up  for  it  in  wit.  I  remember  very  well  that  some 
malignant    '*  blue "    circulated   the   following   anecdote 


TORY  MEMBERS  I  HAVE  KNOWN.    115 

at  the  expense  of  the  rival  candidate,  tending  to  show 
the    narrow   range   of   theological    learning   to   be    ex- 
pected from  the   ''  greens/'     A  candidate  at  a  public 
meeting,  in  the  course  of  being  heckled  by  his  hearers, 
was  asked — so  ran  the  story — whether  he  would  vote 
for   the   revision   of   the   Decalogue.     Not   knowing   in 
the  least  what  the   Decalogue  was,  he  whispered  for 
information  to  the  Chairman,  who  was  just  as  ignorant 
as  himself.     However,  something  had  to  be  said,  so  he 
told  the  perplexed  orator  that  he  believed  it  had  some- 
thing to  do  either  with  the  Cattle   Plague  or  else  with 
flogging  in  the  Army — he  wasn't  sure  which.     Where- 
upon the  now  well-informed  speaker  turned  to  his  inter- 
rogator, and  assured  him  that  he  would  vote  not  only  for 
the  revision  of  the  Decalogue,  but  for  its  total  abolition. 
Before   returning   from   this   digression,    I   may   re- 
mark that  it  was  not  all  at  once  that  the  ten-pounders 
reconciled  themselves  to  the   enforcement  of  the  law 
against    bribery    and    corruption.     In    many    places    it 
was  commonly  believed  that  your  vote  was  your  pro- 
perty, which  you  were  at  liberty  to  dispose  of  to  the 
greatest  advantage.     I  remember  a  report  that  a  voter 
— I  think  at  St.   Albans — brought   an    action   against 
the  member  for  the  sum  to  which  he  considered  him- 
self entitled.     This,  however,  is  probably  a  myth.     But 
the  following  amusing  instance  of  the  pertinacity  with 
which  the  old   class   of  voters  clung  to  their  electoral 
traditions  was   given  me  by  a   Yorkshire  friend,   who 
was  Chairman  of  the  Conservative  Committee  for  some 
Yorkshire  borough  before   1867.     The   Committee  had 
given  out  that  they  were  firmly  resolved  to  discontinue 
all  such  proceedings  as  were  known   to  be  illegal,  and 
which  had  recently  caused  more  than  one  important 


ii6  TORY    MEMORIES. 

borough  to  be  disfranchised.  But  the  voters  did  not 
take  it  seriously.  They  thought  the  declaration  was 
only  a  dodge  to  deceive  their  opponents.  Acting  upon 
this  conviction,  one  day,  when  the  Committee  were 
sitting,  a  local  canvasser  came  into  the  room  and  whis- 
pered to  the  Chairman:  "There's  a  man  below,  sir, 
has  got  a  cow  to  sell ;  what  do  you  think  ?  "  '*  Go 
along,"  said  the  Chairman ;  *'  haven't  you  been  told 
that  nothing  of  the  kind  was  to  be  done  at  this  elec- 
tion ?  "  The  emissary  retired,  but  was  soon  followed 
by  another,  who  likewise  whispered  in  the  Chairman's 
ear  :  *'  There's  a  man  downstairs,  sir,  has  got  a  cottage 
to  let ;  what  do  you  think  ?  "  This  disciple  of  jobbery 
was  also  promptly  ejected  with  a  severe  rebuke.  But 
it  was  long  before  the  fact  was  fully  realised  that  the 
Committee  were  in  earnest,  and  the  Chairman  was 
again  asked  more  than  once  "  what  he  thought " 
about  some  equally  nefarious  transaction. 

But  let  nobody  suppose  that  the  suppression  of 
direct  bribery  was  the  triumph  of  pure  honesty.  There 
are  many  ways  of  influencing  a  man's  vote  besides 
giving  him  three  times  the  value  of  a  cow  or  three  times 
the  rent  of  a  cottage.  The  only  really  immoral  bribery 
is  that  which  induces  a  man,  in  return  for  some  favour 
shown,  to  vote  against  his  conscience ;  and  an  instance 
of  this  may  be  quoted  from  Thackeray's  ''  Book  of 
Snobs,"  in  which  Major  Ponto  confesses  to  having  voted 
Tory,  though  he  had  always  been  a  Liberal,  to  please 
Lord  Bareacres,  who  had  given  him  a  good  deal  of  shoot- 
ing, and  been  very  polite  to  his  wife  and  daughter.  Is 
this  kind  of  bribery  extinct  now  ? 

I  have  gazed  with  interest  on  some  of  the  old 
nomination   boroughs,   many  of  which   probably  were 


TORY  MEMBERS  I  HAVE  KNOWN.        117 

never  much  larger  than  they  were  in  1832  ;  but  as 
other  towns  were  much  smaller  the  contrast  was  less 
conspicuous.  I  have  visited  Great  Bedwin  and  Lud- 
gershall,  in  Wiltshire,  once  represented  by  George 
Selwyn,  whose  house,  when  I  was  there,  was  still  stand- 
ing. Bedwin,  close  to  Savernake  Forest,  was  a  pocket 
borough  belonging  to  the  Ailesbury  family ;  and  an 
old  man  who  recollected  the  Golden  Age  told  me 
which  were  the  *' vote  houses,"  as  they  were  called, 
and  said  he  remembered  at  election  times  the  empty  beer 
barrels  and  the  ^^  free  and  independent "  voters  rolling 
about  the  streets  together.  At  Ludgershall  I  lunched  at 
the  principal  inn,  then  of  course  little  more  than  a  public 
house,  and  I  remember  being  struck  with  the  immense  size 
of  the  beds  in  one  or  two  bedrooms  which  I  entered.  I 
wondered  within  myself  whether  half  a  dozen  voters  were 
ever  tumbled  into  one  of  them  after  an  electioneering 
orgy ;  for  though  in  a  pocket  borough  there  was  no 
necessity  for  bribes,  members  were  expected  to  treat 
their  constituents  on  a  very  liberal  scale. 

The  subject  in  which  Mr.  Pell — to  whom  I  return 
with  apologies  for  my  long  digression — took  the  greatest 
interest  was,  I  think,  the  Poor-Law.  He  believed  it  to 
be  possible  by  the  strict  enforcement  of  the  workhouse 
test  to  stamp  out  pauperism.  I  believe  he  regarded 
outdoor  relief  as  one  of  the  worst  abuses  which  had 
survived  the  Reform  Bill.  This  view  of  the  subject  was 
not  in  strict  accordance  with  Tory  traditions,  and  quite 
contrary  to  the  principles  of  Mr.  Pitt,  as  I  once  told 
him.  But  he  would  give  the  stereotyped  answer  that 
times  were  changed,  that  the  increase  of  the  population 
would  by  itself  have  made  Mr.  Pitt's  idea  impractic- 
able ;   and  to  show  that  his  own  theory  was  both  prac- 


ii8  TORY    MEMORIES. 

tical  and  possible,  he  pointed  to  the  success  which  had 
attended  Sir  Baldwin  Leighton's  effort  to  stamp  out 
pauperism  on  his  own  estate  in  Shropshire.  Pell  and 
Clare  Sewell  Read  worked  together  in  Parliament  as 
the  leaders  of  the  agricultural  party,  though  perhaps  Mr. 
Chaplin  also  is  entitled  to  a  place  among  them.  I  knew 
Mr.  Read,  too,  and  had  many  talks  with  him,  and  many 
letters  from  him  on  questions  of  labour  and  agriculture, 
though  I  was  never  able,  unfortunately,  to  accept  his 
kind  invitations  to  visit  him  at  Honingham,  in  Norfolk. 

Neither  he  nor  Mr.  Pell  adopted  any  other  than 
quite  a  plain  style  of  speaking.  Mr.  Read,  like  Mr. 
Henley,  was  fond  of  speaking  with  his  hands  in  his 
pockets.  It  is  not  a  very  dignified  attitude,  but  it 
conveys  an  impression  of  insouciance  and  self-confidence 
which  perhaps  has  its  advantages  in  certain  circum- 
stances, though  it  would  not  be  viewed  with  a  very 
favourable  eye  if  adopted  by  a  new  member.  I  was 
present  at  the  farmers'  dinner  at  the  Salisbury  Hotel 
in  1885,  when  Read  announced  his  resignation  of  the 
post  which  Mr.  Disraeli  had  given  him  in  the  Ministry 
of  1874,  as  Secretary  of  the  Local  Government  Board. 
The  occasion  was  the  refusal  of  the  Government  to  take 
some  step  for  the  protection  of  cattle  against  disease 
imported  from  abroad ;  and  I  remember  I  got  well 
blown  up  for  neglecting  to  step  across  Fleet  Street  and 
take  the  news  to  the  Standard  in  Shoe  Lane.  Mr.  Read 
did  not  minimise  the  extent  of  the  sacrifice  which  he 
had  made.  Fifteen  hundred  a  year  was  no  slight  loss, 
he  said,  to  a  tenant  farmer.  Of  course,  he  was  loudly 
cheered,  and  deservedly  so.  But  I  have  often  thought 
that  the  sacrifice  was  hardly  called  for. 

I  met  the  late  Sir  George  Baden-Powell  for  the  first 


TORY  MEMBERS  I  HAVE  KNOWN.        iig 

time  at  Alderley  Park,  where  he  was  staying  with  the 
late  Lord  Stanley  of  Alderley.  He  had  not  then  become 
the  Tory  member  for  the  Kirkdale  Division  of  Liverpool ; 
but  he  was  bent  on  a  poHtical  career,  and  I  remember 
thinking  how  very  likely  he  was  to  succeed.  He  always 
seemed  to  me  one  of  the  cleverest  men  I  ever  met — 
almost  as  clever  as  a  man  can  be  without  being  a  genius. 
He  was  at  Balliol,  and  he  told  me  a  good  deal  that  was 
interesting  about  Jowett.  Jowett  dissuaded  him  from 
reading  for  honours,  but  recommended  him  instead  to 
try  for  the  English  Essay  prize.  Baden-Powell  took  his 
advice,  and  it  was  followed  by  some  valuable  hints  for  his 
Essay  on  ^'  The  Political  and  Social  Results  of  the 
Absorption  of  Small  States  by  Large,"  which  gained  the 
Chancellor's  prize  in  1876.  It  was  in  1885  that  he  was 
returned  for  Liverpool,  and  I  have  no  doubt  that  if  he 
had  lived  he  would  in  due  time  have  had  a  seat  upon 
the  Front  Bench.  He  seemed  to  be  taking  to  colonial 
business.  But  my  acquaintance  with  him,  after  all,  was 
cemented  rather  by  field  sports  than  by  politics,  though 
it  is  as  a  Tory  member  that  he  finds  a  place  in  this 
chapter.  He  married  in  1892  Frances,  daughter  of  C. 
Wilson,  Esq.,  of  Sydney,  who  brought  him  a  considerable 
fortune  and  gave  him  an  independent  position. 

While  the  Education  Bill  of  1902  was  going  through 
the  House  I  saw  a  good  deal  of  Professor  J  ebb,  who  was 
kind  enough  to  let  me  interview  him  whenever  I  wished. 
He  was  very  indignant  with  the  Kenyon-Slaney  clause, 
which  he  thought  was  quite  inconsistent  with  the  original 
principle  of  the  Bill,  and  we  were  both  in  hope  that  it 
would  be  repealed  or  modified  in  the  House  of  Lords. 
But,  in  spite  of  the  efforts  made  by  the  Dukes  of  Norfolk 
and   Northumberland,   it   was   accepted,    chiefly,    if    I 


120  TORY   MEMORIES. 

remember,  through  the  influence  of  the  Duke  of  Devon- 
shire. The  Lord  Advocate,  Mr.  Graham  Murray,  was 
also  good  enough  to  talk  with  me  on  the  Education 
Question.  He,  of  course,  agreed  with  Professor  Jebb.  I 
wondered  then,  and  wonder  still,  why  the  Government 
either  accepted  the  Kenyon-Slaney  amendment  or  re- 
jected the  Duke  of  Northumberland's.  But  the  old 
Whig  tradition,  jealousy  of  the  clergy,  still  lingers  in 
aristocratic  circles,  whether  Whig  or  Tory — for  on  this 
question  again  the  Tories  have  departed  from  their 
original  principles.  I  asked  Lord  Stanhope  if  nothing 
could  be  done  to  save  the  Duke  of  Northumberland's 
amendment,  but  he  said  it  was  too  late.  I  thought, 
however,  that  a  better  fight  might  have  been  made  for  it. 
I  have  mentioned  Lord  Balfour  of  Burleigh  in 
an  earlier  chapter,  but  I  am  reminded  that  I 
saw  him  several  times  at  the  Scotch  Office,  and 
that  he  always  told  me  what  I  wanted  to  know. 
I  have  never  found  what  I  have  read  of  in  print — 
any  disposition  on  the  part  of  such  men  to  evade 
speaking  out.  I  know  it  is  possible  for  a  skilful  and 
experienced  diplomatist  to  talk  to  you  in  a  strain  of  the 
greatest  apparent  frankness,  and  yet  with  such  skilful 
and  well-concealed  reservations  that  when  you  leave 
his  presence  you  find  you  have  been  told  nothing ;  but 
I  never  had  occasion  to  suspect  such  artifices  in  any  of 
my  conversations  with  members  of  either  House  of 
Parliament ;  and  I  may  be  allowed  to  add  that  whenever 
I  have  sought  for  information  from  Mr.  Balfour  him- 
self, he  has  always  spoken  to  me  with  a  perfect  frank- 
ness which  no  man  could  suspect  of  being  simulated. 


CHAPTER   X. 

THE   CAVE. 

Lord  Palmerston's  Domestic  Policy — Formation  of  the  Cave — How  the 
Whigs  were  "Dished" — Lord  Grosvenor's  Amendment — The  Day 
and  its  Brief  Career. 

Before  passing  on  to  those  more  general  memories 
which  to  many  people  will,  perhaps,  be  more  enter- 
taining than  my  memories  of  statesmen  and  politicians, 
I  must  devote  one  short  chapter  to  an  episode  in  our 
political  history  with  which  I  happened  to  be  rather 
closely  mixed  up  :  I  mean  the  famous  ''  Cave  "  in  which 
the  AduUamites  abode  in  the  year  1866-7. 

With  the  death  of  Lord  Palmerston  one  chapter  of 
our  constitutional  history  came  to  an  end.  It  represents 
just  one  generation,  from  1832  to  1865.  It  was  an  era 
of  moderate,  middle-class  reform  to  which  both  Whigs 
and  Tories  accommodated  themselves,  the  latter  taking 
the  name  of  Conservatives  instead  of  one  which  the 
later  bearers  of  it  had  made  so  unpopular.  Lord 
Palmerston,  as  much  a  Tory  at  heart  as  he  had 
been  in  the  days  of  Lord  Liverpool,  dared  no  longer  call 
himself  one,  and  as  the  Liberals  appeared  to  be  the 
winning  side  and  to  offer  him  the  most  congenial  sphere 
of  action,  he  donned  their  livery  and  observed  their  rites 
and  ceremonies  with  sufficient  decency  till  he  became 
Prime  Minister  himself,  when,  though  he  still  called 
himself  a  Liberal,  he  never  cared  to  conceal  his  con- 

121 


122  TORY    MEMORIES. 

tempt  for  Liberalism.  That  he  sympathised  more  or 
less  with  the  Liberal  party  on  the  Continent  was  due 
to  the  fact  that  he  thought  English  interests  were  best 
promoted  by  siding  with  them.  This  was  also  Mr. 
Canning's  creed.  The  restored  monarchies  showed  little 
inclination  to  respect  the  wishes  of  Great  Britain  or  to 
listen  to  the  counsels  of  one  to  whom  they  were  so 
deeply  indebted — a  debt  too  great,  perhaps,  to  be  either 
acknowledged  or  repaid.  He  saw,  too,  that  the  policy 
of  the  despotic  Powers  was  irritating  and  stimulating  the 
revolutionary  spirit  in  Europe,  and  it  seemed  to  him, 
therefore,  that  in  checking  them  wherever  he  could  he 
was  acting  on  Conservative  principles. 

His  domestic  policy  requires  no  explanation.  Mr. 
Bright  and  Mr.  Cobden,  Mr.  Milner  Gibson  and  Mr. 
Gladstone  understood  it  quite  well.  There  was  a  cer- 
tain audacity  in  the  manner  in  which  he  openly  sup- 
ported by  his  vote  proposals  which  he  condemned  in 
his  speech.  "  I  shall  vote  for  the  hon.  member's 
motion,*'  he  was  wont  to  say,  '*  to  show  that  I  am  not 
opposed  to  the  principle,"  knowing  all  the  time  right 
well  that  the  principle  would  never  with  his  consent  be 
reduced  to  practice.  The  system  was  perfectly  suc- 
cessful. Lord  John  Russell's  ''Rest  and  be  thankful" 
was  practically  the  creed  of  two-thirds  of  the  nation. 
But  they  had  got  used  to  Liberal  talk  and  Liberal 
phraseology,  and  did  not  care  to  drop  it.  A  number  of 
nicknames  had  been  fastened  on  Tor5dsm  with  which 
people  did  not  like  to  be  pelted,  and  Lord  Palmerston's 
attitude  suited  them  down  to  the  ground  :  reform  on 
our  lips,  repose  in  our  hearts ;  reform  in  the  abstract, 
and  repose  in  the  concrete  :  that  was  the  thing  which 
was  wanted.     Had   Lord   Palmerston   been   ten   years 


THE    CAVE.  123 

younger,  the  history  of  the  last  fifty  years  would  have 
been  widely  different. 

It  is  necessary  to  look  a  little  into  what  preceded 
the  formation  of  the  Cave  if  we  are  to  understand  its 
full  significance.  In  the  lately-published  correspond- 
ence of  the  Earl  of  Lytton,  there  occurs  a  remarkable 
passage  bearing  on  this  period  :  ''  With  what  consum- 
mate ability  have  the  Whigs  continued  for  generations 
to  make  the  Radicals  of  all  sorts  their  faithful  and 
useful  allies,  while  systematically  keeping  them  out  of 
power  and  in  a  position  of  political  subserviency.  If 
the  Whigs  had  not,  in  their  senility,  committed  the 
capital  error  of  entrusting  the  leadership  of  their  party 
to  Gladstone,  an  outsider,  and  if  he  had  had  no  per- 
sonal motive  for  betraying  them  to  the  Radicals,  even 
now  they  would  probably  have  remained  the  ruling 
power  in  England.  I  have  no  doubt  it  was  a  wise 
instinct  of  self-preservation  which  dictated  the  policy 
of  making  every  Whig  Cabinet  a  family  party,  and  ad- 
mitting none  but  born  Whigs  to  the  higher  offices. 
But  the  most  wonderful  tour  de  force  is  that  in  a  genera- 
tion since  1831  they  should  have  so  long  and  so  success- 
fully played  the  part  of  the  popular  party,  the  party 
instinctively  supported  by  all  the  parvenus  and  roturiers, 
without  surrendering  an  atom  of  their  social  exclu- 
siveness  and  family  morgue.  .  .  ."  This  is  very  true, 
yet  it  is  not  easy  to  see  what  alternative  the  Whigs 
had.  They  could  not  stand  without  the  support  of 
either  the  Tories  or  the  Radicals.  While  Palmerston 
lived  they  had  the  support  of  the  Tories  ;  but  there  was 
no  one  left  to  supply  his  place  ;  no  one  with  the  ex- 
quisite tact,  popularity,  and  common-sense  to  play 
the  same  part.     Lord  John  Russell  had  sunk  below  the 


/ 


124  TORY    MEMORIES. 

horizon  ;  *'  he  was  invisible,"  said  Lord  Elcho,  "  to  the 
naked  eye/'  Who  was  there,  then  ?  They  were  almost 
obliged  to  trust  themselves  to  Gladstone  in  the  hope 
that  he  would  be  able  to  manage  the  Radical  wing. 
But  the  Radical  wing  managed  him.  They  caught 
him,  and  never  let  him  go  again. 

The  feeling  of  the  country  in  the  autumn  of  1865 
was  decidedly  hostile  to  organic  change,  and  but  lan- 
guidly stirred  by  the  alleged  anomalies  of  the  electoral 
system.  The  Whig  section  of  the  Liberal  party  were, 
in  their  hearts,  opposed  to  any  further  reduction  of  the 
franchise,  though  they  knew  that  from  time  to  time 
some  trifling  concession  to  their  Radical  allies  might 
be  necessary.  But  beyond  this  it  would  do  them  no 
good.  They  had  got  under  the  existing  system  all  they 
were  ever  likely  to  get ;  they  had  more  to  lose  than 
to  gain  by  a  Reform  Bill.  But  it  was  otherwise  with 
the  Tories.  They,  under  the  existing  system,  seemed 
doomed  to  perpetual  opposition,  and  the  same  prospect 
which  made  the  Whigs  reformers  in  the  reign  of  George 
IV.  reconciled  the  Tories  to  reform  in  the  reign  of  Queen 
Victoria.  From  a  purely  party  point  of  view  they 
might  have  much  to  gain  from  a  wide  extension  of  the 
franchise.  They  could  not  well  be  worse  off  than  they 
had  been  for  the  last  twenty  years. 

This  was  not,  perhaps,  a  very  lofty  view  of  the 
situation  for  statesmen  to  adopt.  But  it  gave  them  an 
excellent  practical  motive  for  supporting  an  extended 
suffrage  of  which  the  Whigs  were  destitute.  What 
the  Whigs,  however,  saw  was  that  if  a  popular  Reform 
Bill  had  really  become  inevitable,  the  Tories  must  not 
have  the  credit  of  it.  The  question,  they  thought,  be- 
longed   to    themselves.     Whatever    popularity    accrued 


THE    CAVE.  125 

from  it  was  part  of  their  political  assets.  But  neither 
a  Radical  Reform  Bill  nor  a  Tory  one  would  suit  their 
book,  and  their  object  clearly  was  to  take  the  Russell 
Reform  Bill  and  mould  it  into  a  measure  which  should 
do  themselves  as  little  harm  as  possible.  If  the  Govern- 
ment had  accepted  Lord  Dunkellin's  amendment,  this  is 
what  they  might  have  had.  Had  Gladstone  been  con- 
tent to  tread  in  Lord  Palmerston's  footsteps,  the  Con- 
servative Whigs  might  have  retained  their  supremacy 
for  a  long  time.  By  continually  throwing  sops  to  Cer- 
berus they  could  have  kept  the  seven-pounders  in  good 
humour.  But  by  this  time  Mr.  Gladstone,  who  had 
cut  himself  adrift  from  the  Tories,  was  now  equally 
determined  not  to  serve  again  under  the  Whigs.  He  had 
had  enough  of  that  as  Lord  Palmerston^s  Chancellor 
of  the  Exchequer.  Mr.  Bright,  who  now  had  his  ear, 
knew  quite  well  that  bit-by-bit  reform,  which  was  the 
game  of  the  Whigs,  was  fatal  to  the  Radicals.  He  saw 
that  a  rating  franchise  had  an  element  of  permanence 
in  it  which  a  rental  franchise  had  not,  and  he  acted  ac- 
cordingly. Mr.  Gladstone  took  his  advice,  and  it  was 
this,  and  not  so  much  the  Reform  Bill  of  1867,  which 
''  dished  the  Whigs." 

The  Whigs,  I  have  been  told,  saw  their  danger.  But 
it  would  not  have  suited  them  to  move  in  a  body  against 
the  Russell  Reform  Bill.  They  must  not  appear  at 
this  critical  moment  the  enemies  of  reform.  But  they 
continued,  with  their  usual  skill,  to  make  it  appear 
that  the  Conservatives  were  chiefly  answerable  for  that 
opposition  to  the  Government  Bill  which  they  had 
secretly  encouraged  themselves.  It  was  necessary,  how- 
ever, to  give  their  followers  a  lead,  and  the  heir  of  a 
great  Whig  house,  a  young  man  of  known  moderation, 


126  TORY    MEMORIES. 

and  generally  respected,  was  united  with  the  son  of  a 
distinguished  Tory  peer  in  a  combined  attack  upon  a 
Bill  in  which  the  Whig  supporters  of  the  Government 
and  even  Whig  members  of  the  Administration  dis- 
cerned too  clearly  the  Radical  influence  under  which 
Mr.  Gladstone  was  acting. 

Such  is  a  history  of  the  famous  *'  Cave "  which 
created  a  degree  of  public  excitement  in  the  spring  of 
1866  greater,  if  I  have  been  rightly  informed,  than  even 
the  Corn  Law  debate  had  ever  aroused. 

I  remember  well  being  one  of  a  large  crowd  who 
assembled  in  Westminster  Hall,  which  was  then  open 
to  the  public,  to  hear  the  result  of  the  division  on  Lord 
Grosvenor's  amendment,  to  the  effect  that  the  House 
ought  to  be  in  possession  of  the  whole  Government 
scheme,  including  the  distribution  of  seats,  before  the 
Franchise  Bill  was  read  a  second  time.  The  Bill 
proposed  a  £"]  rental  franchise  in  the  towns  and  £14 
in  the  counties.  If  this  Bill  passed  and  the  Act  became 
law  before  the  redistribution  of  seats  was  entered  on, 
it  was  felt  that  the  Government  would  have  the  House 
at  their  mercy.  A  General  Election  would  bring  the 
Government  a  large  amount  of  support  from  the  newly 
enfranchised  constituencies,  and,  however  objectionable 
their  redistribution  scheme,  they  might  snap  their  fingers 
at  the  Opposition.  This  was  felt  very  strongly  in  1866, 
as  it  was  again  in  1885.  In  London  generally  the  people 
were  on  the  side  of  the  Opposition,  for  everybody  could 
see  through  the  policy  of  the  Government,  and  appre- 
ciate the  advantage  of  treating  reform  as  a  whole  and 
not  by  halves.  But  I  think  there  was  something  more 
than  this  which  influenced  both  ''  the  man  in  the 
street  *'  and  the  man  in  the  slum.     I  remember  people 


THE    CAVE.  127 

talking  about  it  as  if  it  were  a  fair  stand-up  fight.  Mr. 
Gladstone  had  *'  a  probabiHty  of  succeeding  about 
him  "  which,  as  Sir  Lucius  OTrigger  says,  ''  was  mighty 
provoking/'  And  I  think  many  even  of  those  who 
agreed  with  his  general  principles  rather  chuckled  over 
the  spectacle  of  his  being  *'  bearded  in  his  den/'  At 
all  events,  on  that  memorable  morning,  3  a.m.,  April 
28th,  the  cheers  in  Westminster  Hall  when  it  was 
announced  that  the  majority  for  Ministers  was  only  five 
were  loud  and  long. 

I  was  standing  at  the  time  beside  a  Gladstonian  friend, 
who  appeared  to  care  nothing  at  all  about  the  political 
situation,  but  was  absorbed  in  its  dramatic  interest. 
It  was  doubtful  to  the  last  how  the  division  would  go. 
It  was  not,  as  has  often  been  the  case  on  similar  occa- 
sions, a  foregone  conclusion,  the  only  question  being 
by  what  majority  the  victory  would  be  gained.  Here  it 
was  anybody's  battle  to  the  time  when  the  bell  rang. 
As  it  was,  a  majority  so  small  was  tantamount  to  a 
defeat,  but  Mr.  Gladstone  decided  not  to  resign.  The 
Radicals  wanted  their  rental  franchise,  which  they  fore- 
saw could  easily  be  lowered  again  as  occasion  offered, 
whereas  a  rating  franchise  represented  a  principle,  and 
could  less  easily  be  broken  down.  They  knew  that  if  the 
question  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Tories  they  would 
propose  a  rating  franchise,  and  this  is  what  they  after- 
wards did ;  but,  as  it  was  necessary  to  get  them  out  of 
office  at  the  earliest  possible  moment,  the  Whigs  lent 
the  Radicals  sufficient  aid  to  enable  them  to  defeat 
it,  though  by  doing  so  they  cut  their  own  throats. 

The  Russell  Government  having  resigned  on  the  car- 
riage of  Lord  DunkelHn's  amendment,  the  third  Derby 
Administration  was  formed,  in  the  summer  of  1866.    All 


128  TORY   MEMORIES. 

through  that  autumn  and  winter   speculation  was  rife 
with  regard  to  the  probable  policy  of  the  new  Ministry. 
Mr.     Lowe's    eloquent    speeches    against    the    Russell 
Reform  Bill ;  his  warnings  against  democracy,  ''  where 
every  thistle  is  a  forest  tree,"  and  his  protests  against 
the  moral  and  social  ill-effects  of   equality,  had  sunk 
deep    into     the     minds    of    many  thinking   men  who 
knew  nothing   about  the  Trojan  horse.     And  there  are 
not  wanting  even  now  those  who  believe   that  if  Lord 
Derby  had    boldly    taken    his    stand  against    further 
concessions   to   democracy    he  would    have    had    such 
an  amount  of  support  from  public   opinion  as    might 
have    given    pause    to    any    Liberal    or    Radical  Ad- 
ministration whatsoever.     Whether  this  attitude  would 
have  had  the  desired  result  or  not  it  is  now  useless 
to    inquire.      But    among    other    circumstances    which 
influenced   the    Government    in    coming  to  a  different 
decision,    the    Hyde    Park    riots   were   doubtless   one, 
though    their    significance    at    the    time   was   greatly 
over-rated.     After  the  Park  railings  had  been  broken 
down  and  all  the  mischief  done,  the  Life  Guards  came 
up   into   Piccadilly.     But   it   was   always   said  by  the 
police  that  they  could  have  repulsed  the  rioters  by  them- 
selves if  the  affair  had  been  left  to  their  own  manage- 
ment.   Why  it  was  not  I  never  understood.    The  result 
was  disastrous,  for  it  led  to  a  belief  among  the  working 
classes  that  governments  were  to    be    intimidated  by 
popular  demonstrations,  and,  what  was  just  as  bad  from 
a  party  point  of  view   at   the   moment,  it   discredited 
the  Tories,  who  were  charged  with  weakness  in  having 
permitted  such  a  mob  triumph,  though  what  justice 
there  was  for  such  a  charge  it  is  difiicult  to  understand. 
It  was  in  the  autumn  of  1866  that  it  occurred  to  an 


THE    CAVE.  129 

enterprising  journalist  that  in  the  existing  state  of  parties 
an  independent  Conservative  paper  representing  the 
views  of  the  *Xave"  would  have  a  good  chance  of 
success.  It  was  an  excellent  idea,  and  had  the  scheme 
been  properly  launched,  it  is  probable  that  the  Day 
might  have  taken  a  permanent  place  among  the  lead- 
ing journals  of  London.  The  projector  consulted  me, 
and  asked  me  whether,  if  the  paper  were  started,  I 
would  write  the  political  articles.  A  certain  amount  of 
capital  was  promised  by  the  friends  of  the  proprietor, 
and  it  was  hoped  that  the  Cave  would  do  the  rest. 
The  leading  members  of  it  were  appealed  to,  and  they 
all  promised  their  confidence  and  their  support.  They 
also  opened  their  purse  strings,  and  continued  to  sub- 
sidise the  new  journal  for  some  months,  inspiring  its 
leaders  and  giving  us  all  those  private  ''  tips  ''  which 
editors  so  highly  prize. 

For  some  months  I  was  in  constant  communication 
with  Lord  Elcho  and  Major  Anson,  a  brother  of  Lord 
Lichfield,  and  I  sometimes  saw  Lord  Grosvenor,  and 
also  Mr.  Spender,  who  was  much  interested  in  the  paper. 
It  had  a  great  success  at  first,  and  Mr.  W.  H.  Smith 
offered  to  take  all  that  we  could  print.  It  was  eagerly 
read,  because  it  was  the  only  organ  of  opinion  through 
which  the  policy  of  the  Cave  could  be  ascertained,  and 
during  the  debates  on  the  Reform  Bill  in  1867,  when 
any  important  division  was  impending,  the  columns  of 
the  Bay  were  consulted  to  see  which  way  the  Cave  would 
vote,  as  they  sometimes  held  the  issue  in  their  hands. 

I  used  to  go  down  to  the  House  of  Commons  late  at 
night  to  see  Lord  Elcho  or  one  of  his  friends,  and  get 
my  cue  for  next  day's  article,  which  I  wrote  in  our  office 
in  Essex  Street  sometimes  up  to  three  o'clock  in  the 


130  TORY    MEMORIES. 

morning,  or  even  later.  Of  articles  written  in  this  ex- 
treme haste  the  less  said  about  the  style  the  better.  But 
they  seemed  to  go  down  with  the  pubUc,  and  satisfied 
our  supporters.  The  policy  of  the  Cave  was  to  sup- 
port the  Conservative  Reform  Bill,  though  Mr.  Lowe 
had  shaken  the  dust  off  his  feet  against  it.  But  they 
were  all  anxious  to  avoid  saying  anything  disrespectful 
of  Mr.  Gladstone.  I  had  my  knuckles  rapped  severely 
on  one  occasion  for  venturing  to  compare  him  on  some 
quite  trifling  occasion  to  the  dog  in  the  manger.  The 
Cave  men  were  gentlemen,  and  felt  that  one  who  had 
so  recently  been  their  leader  was  still  entitled  to  their 
regard.  Matthew  Arnold,  in  his  well-known  dictum 
about  sweetness  and  light,  and  the  qualities  of  an 
aristocracy,  especially  mentioned  Lord  Elcho  as  an 
instance  of  what  he  meant  by  sweetness,  and  certainly 
he  deserved  the  epithet,  if  any  man  ever  did.  Colonel 
Anson,  too,  was  a  very  pleasant  man,  and  I  got  on 
capitally  with  all  of  them,  so  long  as  the  paper  lasted. 
Unfortunately,  there  had  been  some  misunderstanding 
with  regard  to  the  funds  which  the  editor  and  proprietor 
had  undertaken  to  provide,  and  when  Lords  Elcho, 
Grosvenor,  and  Lichfield  found  that  this  money  was 
not  forthcoming,  they  not  unnaturally  concluded  that 
they  had  been  deceived,  and  that  their  contributions 
had  been  obtained  under  false  pretences.  This  was  not 
the  case.  But  perhaps  the  noblemen  and  gentlemen 
who  had  advanced  considerable  sums  on  the  strength 
of  these  representations  can  hardly  be  blamed  for  with- 
drawing their  support  when  they  found  that  they  had 
never  rested  on  any  solid  foundation. 

This  was  a  time  of  great   activity  among   Parlia- 
mentary reformers.     You  might  have  thought  that  not 


THE    CAVE.  131 

one  but  a  dozen  Abbd  Sieyes  had  suddenly  appeared 
in  this  island.  We  pubhshed  some  philosophical  specu- 
lations on  the  subject  from  a  Scotch  professor — I  think 
he  was — which  delighted  a  certain  section  of  readers. 
I  remember  a  clergyman  rushing  into  the  office  one 
morning  and  crying  out,  like  '*Toad-in-the-Hole/*  *'  Ah ! 
this  is  what  we  want — this  is  what  we  have  been  waiting 
for  !  ''  But  it  was  not  what  the  House  of  Commons  was 
waiting  for,  and  the  speculators  mourned  over  the  stupid- 
ity of  both  political  parties,  who  would  not  approach 
these  questions  in  the  spirit  of  Plato  or  Aristotle. 

I  myself  was  much  disappointed  at  the  stoppage  of 
the  paper,  and  made  the  most  strenuous  efforts  to 
avert  it.  It  was  not  wholly  on  interested  grounds  that 
I  did  this,  for  I  liked  the  work  and  the  excitement,  and 
the  consciousness  of  playing  a  part  in  a  great  political 
movement,  and  I  valued  even  more  than  this  the 
acquaintance  which  I  thus  made  with  distinguished 
men  and  the  confidence  which  they  reposed  in  me. 
Still,  the  loss  of  twelve  guineas  a  week  was  something  ; 
and,  putting  aside  for  a  time  some  other  work  on  which 
I  was  engaged,  I  packed  up  my  things  and  retreated 
to  my  father's  parsonage  in  Leicestershire,  there  to 
ruminate  on  the  mutability  of  human  affairs,  and  to 
diversify  this  occupation  by  catching  perch  and  roach 
in  the  brook,  and  at  other  times  going  to  sleep  in  the 
long,  cool  grass.  I  had  spent  a  happy  time  on  the 
Day^  and  I  shall  always  look  back  upon  it  with  satis- 
faction. I  had,  nevertheless,  the  mortification  to 
discover  that  half  the  people  in  Leicestershire,  though 
much  interested  in  the  Reform  question,  had  never  so 
much  as  heard  of  the  Bay.  Vervecum  p atria.  Such  is 
reputation  ! 


CHAPTER    XI. 

TORY   LADIES. 

The  Era  of  the  Political  Hostess — Lady  Granville  and  the  Rising  Liberal 
Journalist — Lady  Jeune's  Receptions — Sir  John  Gorst  and  Lord 
Beaconsfield's  Funeral — Sir  Richard  Webster — An  Eminent  Counsel 
on  County  Government — Reminiscences  of  Prince  Charles  Edward 
— Lady  Ridley — A  Sympathiser  with  Lord  Iddesleigh — Lady  Car- 
narvon— Lady  Stanhope — Lady  Salisbury — Lady  Winifred  Herbert 
— Mrs.  St.  John  Brodrick. 

"  She  is  the  only  good  woman  the  Tories  have/'  says 
one  Whig  member  to  another,  talking  of  Lady  Deloraine 
in  "  Sybil  '*  in  the  year  1839.  Those  were  the  days  in 
which  the  political  lady  was  still  a  great  personage  ; 
not  that  she  has  yet  lost  all  her  original  brightness,  or 
all  her  original  utility.  But  times  have  changed,  and 
the  class  on  whom  her  fascinations  were  chiefly  exercised 
no  longer  possess  sufficient  political  power  to  repay  those 
sacrifices  which,  according  to  Lady  St.  Julian,  were 
necessary  to  the  kind  of  social  bribery  in  which  she  and 
her  sisters  were  proficients. 

The  middle  class,  for  more  than  a  whole  generation, 
held  the  fate  of  parties  in  their  hands.  The  class  above 
them  was  **  in  Society  "  already.  The  class  below  them 
had  as  yet  no  ambition  to  enter  it.  But  between  these 
came  a  numerous  and  powerful  section  of  the  com- 
munity, with  plenty  of  money,  and  struggling  for  recogni- 
tion. To  get  into  Parliament  was  the  first  step,  and 
their  votes  were  made  the  price  of  admission  within 
the  charmed  circle. 

132 


TORY   LADIES.  133 

Then,  indeed,  the  poHtical  great  lady,  if  possessed 
of  the  requisite  tact  and  the  necessary  fascinations, 
could  exercise  considerable  influence  on  the  fortunes  of 
the  Party  to  whose  interests  she  was  attached.  Loyalty 
to  a  pretty  woman  who  took  you  by  the  hand,  who 
coaxed  you  and  flattered  you,  and  made  you  feel  for  the 
moment  not  merely  in  Society,  but  of  it,  was  not  very 
diflicult  to  secure  ;  and  loyalty  to  the  patroness  meant, 
of  course,  fidelity  to  the  party.  Such  was  the  important 
function  discharged  by  ''  the  great  ladies  '*  who,  in  spite 
of  Disraeh's  satire,  were  for  a  number  of  years  a  real 
power  in  politics.  Even  before  it  became  necessary  to 
lavish  so  much  attention  on  the  middle  class,  these 
seductive  dames  did  good  work,  both  in  confirming  the 
allegiance  of  friends  and  in  sapping  the  allegiance  of 
foes.  There  is  still  a  wide  field  open  to  the  influence  of 
such  attractions.  As  the  middle-class  members  gradu- 
ally lost  their  importance,  journalists  and  men  of  letters 
began  to  take  their  place.  *'  In  my  time,'*  says  Major 
Pendennis,  ''  poetry  and  genius  and  all  that  sort  of  thing 
were  devilish  disreputable.  But  the  times  are  changed 
now — there's  a  run  upon  literature — clever  fellows  get 
into  the  best  houses  in  town,  be  gad  !  '' 

But  what  was  only  beginning  in  Major  Pendennis's 
time,  has  since  his  day  become  a  recognised  part  of 
the  social  system.  And  many  great  ladies  welcome  to 
their  drawing-rooms  men  who  have  made  any  name  for 
themselves  in  literature,  journalism,  or  art,  quite  as 
much,  I  think,  with  the  view  of  doing  honour  to  those 
professions  as  with  any  idea  of  enlisting  advocates  for 
their  own  political  friends.  '*  This  is  a  neutral  house,'' 
Raikes  once  said  to  me  at  Lady  Stanhope's,  as  Sir  William 
Harcourt  stalked  in,  towering  above  the  heads  of  some 


134  TORY    MEMORIES. 

smaller  Tory  guests  ;  and  I  think  nearly  as  much  might 
be  said  of  all  the  Tory  drawing-rooms  in  which  I  ever 
found  myself.  Men  of  letters,  however,  were  not  to 
be  had  quite  so  readily  as  the  middle-class  member  of 
Parliament  described  in  '*  Sybil."  And  I  remember 
very  well  when  a  well-known  Liberal  journalist  who  was 
just  rising  into  repute  received  a  card  from  Lady 
Granville,  he  at  once  threw  it  into  the  fire.  *'  I  don*t 
know  Lady  Granville/*  he  said,  *'  and  Lady  Granville 
does  not  know  me.  What  right  has  she  to  send  me  a 
card  ?  '*  He  treated  it  as  a  piece  of  impertinence. 
The  man,  who  was  a  friend  of  mine,  and  has  since  risen 
to  great  political  eminence,  perhaps  carried  his  ideas 
of  independence  a  little  too  far.  And  I  have  always 
thought  that  there  was  more  false  pride  in  refusing  the 
invitation  than  there  would  have  been  humility  in  ac- 
cepting it. 

It  is  now  nearly  thirty  years  ago  since  I  first  met 
Lady  St.  Helier,  then  the  Hon.  Mrs.  Stanley,  the  young 
and  handsome  widow  of  Colonel  John  Stanley,  of  the 
Guards,  brother  and  heir-presumptive  to  the  then  Lord 
Stanley  of  Alderley.  She  was  a  very  clever  woman,  and 
had  by  that  time  established  her  receptions  in  Wimpole 
Street  on  a  recognised  footing,  and  made  them  so  agree- 
able that  all  the  world  of  fashion,  literature,  and  art 
flocked  to  her  rooms,  which  were  always  crowded.  She 
had  very  cathoHc  sympathies,  and  I  first  met  her  at 
dinner  in  Devonshire  Street,  at  H.  M.  Hyndman*s,  who 
had  not  then  developed  into  the  full-blooded  SociaHst 
which  he  afterwards  became,  and  was  only  known  as  a 
clever  writer  with  strong  Radical  proclivities.  I  con- 
tinued to  be  on  friendly  terms  with  him  for  a  long  time. 
We  belonged  to  the  same  club,  and  when  Mr.  Hyndman 


TORY    LADIES.  135 

was  compelled  to  leave  it  in  consequence  of  the  part  he 
had  taken  in  the  Trafalgar  Square  riots,  our  windows 
were  broken  by  his  friends.  However,  all  this  was  in  the 
future.  I  sat  next  Mrs.  Stanley  at  a  well-appointed 
dinner-table  which  indicated  no  aversion  to  the  in- 
equalities of  Society  or  to  the  iniquities  of  prosperity. 
After  dinner  I  rejoined  her  in  the  drawing-room, 
and  the  next  morning  I  received  an  invitation  to  dine 
with  her  at  a  house  she  had  taken  in  Putney  for  the 
summer.  The  other  guests  were  Lady  Tweeddale  (Mrs. 
Stanley's  sister),  Mr.  Edward  Stanhope  (then  a  member 
of  the  Disraeli  Government),  Mr.  Theodore  Walrond, 
and  Mr.  Hosack.  After  this  we  were  usually  asked  to 
her  receptions  in  Wimpole  Street,  which  she  afterwards 
exchanged  for  Harley  Street.  Here  we  met  everybody  : 
princes  and  princesses,  statesmen,  soldiers,  authors, 
actors  and  actresses,  making  up  a  most  novel  and  delight- 
ful medley.  Here  I  remember,  soon  after  the  change 
of  Government  in  1880,  seeing  Mr.  Cross  and  Lord  Gran- 
ville in  close  conversation  in  a  corner  of  the  room,  and 
being  interested  in  overhearing  Mr.  Cross  say  to  the 
Whig  Foreign  Secretary,  '*  Oh,  if  the  French  say 
that,  of  course  it's  all  right."  Here  I  remember  Miss 
Gertrude  Kingston  tripping  up  to  me,  just  about  the 
time  when  there  was  so  much  talk  about  thought-read- 
ing. ''  Oh,"  she  said,  *'  I've  just  been  telling  Sir  Francis 
Jeune*  (the  judge  of  the  Divorce  Court)  that  his  Court 
will  soon  have  to  be  aboHshed  ;  there'll  be  no  further 
use  for  it.  If  people  even  wanted  to  do  anjrthing  wrong, 
they  daren't  think  about  it,  for  fear  their  thoughts 
should  be  discovered."      ''  Oh,  but,  Miss  Kingston,"  I 

*  Mrs.  Stanley  married  Sir  Francis  Jeune  in  1881.      He  was  created 
Lord  St.  Helier  more  than  twenty  years  afterwards. 


136  TORY   MEMORIES. 

said,  *'  you  never  do  think  of  doing  anything  wrong, 
I'm  sure/'  Upon  which,  with  a  httle  pout,  she  turned 
away. 

Miss  Ellen  Terry  and  her  sister  Marion,  whom  I 
knew  very  well,  were  often  there.  I  saw  very  little 
of  the  former,  but  more  of  Marion,  who  was  very 
pretty  and  very  agreeable,  and  I  had  always  a 
great  opinion  of  her  as  a  comic  actress,  though  she 
ceased  after  a  time  to  appear  in  such  parts,  and  I  don't 
know  that  she  has  ever  resumed  them.  She  lived  at 
one  time  just  opposite  to  our  house,  and  dined  with 
us  more  than  once.  I  am  here  reminded  that  I  came 
very  suddenly  one  evening,  on  turning  a  corner,  upon  a 
lady  whom  I  did  not  at  first  recognise.  She  was 
standing  alone,  with  a  settled  melancholy  on  her 
countenance  ;  how  changed  from  her  whom  I  had  often 
seen  keep  stalls,  boxes,  and  gallery  in  a  roar,  and  whose 
eyes,  mouth,  and  chin  brimmed  over  with  humour  : 
now  she  looked  the  picture  of  gloom !  It  was  Mrs. 
John  Wood. 

Calling  on  Lady  Jeune  one  Sunday  afternoon,  I 
found  Httle  Miss  Norreys  sitting  alone  with  her,  a  quiet, 
ladylike  young  actress  whom  I  had  often  admired  on 
the  stage.  Somehow  or  other  the  names  of  Lord  and 
Lady  Beacons  field  came  up,  and  with  them  the  old  joke 
about  his  marriage,  already  mentioned.  I  remember 
the  girl  asking  with  a  pensive  air  and  in  a  tone  of  great 
earnestness,  '*  And  did  he  marry  for  love  ? "  Poor 
thing  !  she  had,  if  I  remember  aright,  a  melancholy  end 
— I  hope  not  accelerated  by  any  such  secret  sorrow  as 
Viola  described. 

Sir  Stafford  Northcote,  who  had  known  Lady  Jeune 
from  her  childhood,  was  often  at  her  house,  and  so,  too. 


TORY   LADIES.  137 

was  Mr.  Balfour.  On  one  occasion,  I  remember,  my  wife 
sat  just  opposite  to  me  next  to  Sir  John  Gorst,  who 
took  her  in  to  dinner.  She  asked  him  whether  he 
had  been  to  Lord  Beaconsfield's  funeral.  His  answer 
was  characteristic.  ''  No/'  he  said ;  "I  was  not  in- 
vited, and  I  am  not  one  of  those  people  who  invite 
themselves.'*  On  another  occasion,  when  I  dined 
there,  the  Prince  and  Princess  Christian  were  of  the 
party,  and  after  dinner  I  found  myself  sitting  oppo- 
site Lord  CarHngford  and  Dr.  Smith,  of  the  Quarterly 
Review,  who  began  talking  of  Junius.  They  both  pro- 
fessed themselves  strong  *'  Franciscans,*'  as  it  was 
called.  I  ventured  to  interpose  the  remark  that  Lord 
Grenville  was  reported  to  have  said  that  he  knew  who 
Junius  was,  and  that  it  was  not  Francis.  Lord  Car- 
Hngford, who  was  in  trouble  over  his  riband  and  his  shirt 
collar,  answered  rather  shortly  that  the  statement  was 
not  so  well-authenticated  as  I  supposed  ;  and  as  I  saw 
that  he  was  very  uncomfortable  about  the  back  of  his 
neck,  I  forebore  to  ask  him  anything  more.  Mr.  John 
Murray,  whom  I  often  met  at  Lady  Jeune's,  talked  to 
me  once  a  good  deal  about  Junius,  and  showed  me 
some  autograph  letters  on  the  subject.  He  published  a 
very  able  article  in  the  Quarterly  by  Mr.  Coulton,  some 
time  in  the  'fifties,  attacking  the  Franciscan  theory,  and 
putting  forward  Lord  Lyttelton  as  the  author  of  Junius. 
Lord  Macaulay,  who  wrote  a  letter  to  Mr.  Murray  on 
the  subject  did,  I  think,  show  that  Junius  was  not 
likely  to  have  been  Lyttelton,  but  he  got  no  nearer  any 
proof  that  he  was  Sir  Philip  Francis.  Mr.  Massey's 
History  of  England  should  be  consulted  on  this  question. 
In  the  drawing-room  on  the  evening  to  which  I 
have  referred  I  was  presented  to  the  Princess  Christian, 


138  TORY    MEMORIES. 

who  asked  me  a  few  questions  about  myself  and  my 
writings,  which  showed  all  the  ready  tact  with  which  I 
suppose  Royalty  is  born.  The  Prince,  I  remember, 
was  much  interested  in  the  fact  that  I  had  met  with 
an  old  acquaintance  of  his  in  the  shape  of  a  stable- 
man who  used  to  be  a  rough-rider  to  the  pack  of 
hounds  with  which  the  Prince  hunted  in  Hampshire. 
*'  Oh,  yes,'*  he  said,  ''  I  remember  old  Taylor  well. 
What  is  he  doing  now  ?  ''  I  told  him  he  was  foreman  at 
a  livery  stable  in  South  Kensington,  and  apparently 
doing  pretty  well.     He  seemed  glad  to  hear  about  him. 

Lady  Jeune^s  was  a  decidedly  Tory  house  at  this 
time,  or — more  properly — I  should  say  Unionist.  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Chamberlain  would  be  there,  and  Lord  James  of 
Hereford,  and  others  of  less  note.  But  Toryism  pre- 
dominated, and  among  the  cheeriest  of  Tory  members 
who  frequented  these  Hvely  gatherings  was  George 
Russell,  whom  I  had  known  long  before  at  Oxford,  and 
who  was  now  Sir  George,  and  member  for  a  division  of 
Berkshire.  He  had  the  most  joyous  countenance  of  any 
man  I  ever  knew,  and  it  was  impossible  to  be  in  low 
spirits  for  three  minutes  in  his  company.  Marriott,  who 
was  much  petted  by  the  Tories  after  winning  a  doubtful 
seat  at  Brighton  ;  Mr.  Mallock  ;  and  last,  but  not  least. 
Sir  Richard  Webster,  come  into  my  mind  as  I  look  back 
to  those  days.  A  friend  of  mine  volunteered  to  put  a 
legal  question  to  Sir  Richard,  who,  as  might  be  ex- 
pected, evaded  it  with  the  usual  reply  of  a  lawyer.  The 
question,  I  think,  concerned  the  relation  which  would 
exist  between  the  editor  and  the  proprietors  of  a  news- 
paper, supposing  a  deceased  proprietor  who  was  sole 
owner  to  have  left  the  property  to  his  natural  represen- 
tatives, and  the  editorship  to  somebody  else  for  life. 


TORY    LADIES.  139 

Could  the  latter  do  as  he  liked  with  it  :  convert  it  from 
a  Unionist  to  a  Home  Rule  organ,  no  matter  how  much 
the  sale  might  thereby  be  reduced  ?  The  future  Lord 
Chief  Justice  said  he  could  not  answer  such  a  question 
offhand  or  without  seeing  the  testator's  will. 

Lord  Rowton  often  came,  and  once  when  he  was  late 
I  heard  Lady  Jeune  ask  him  how  many  ties  he  had 
spoiled.  Mr.  Bouverie,  too,  who  had  then  become 
thoroughly  anti-Gladstonian,  used  to  appear  now  and 
again,  and  I  remember  being  one  of  a  deputation  ap- 
pointed by  Lady  Jeune  to  go  and  ask  him  why  he 
shouldn't  stand  for  Northampton,  the  seat  being  then 
vacant  through  the  doings  of  Mr.  Bradlaugh.  It  was 
seriously  urged  upon  him  that  he  was  the  man  to  do  it, 
and  save  the  seat  from  the  Radicals.  Mr.  Bouverie 
smiled  good-naturedly,  and  said  he  would  think  about  it 
and  see  ''  whether  it  would  wash."  However,  he  came 
to  the  conclusion  that  the  scheme  was  not  a  fast  colour, 
and  we  heard  no  more  of  it.  I  think  Greenwood  was 
one  of  the  deputation.  He  and  Traill  and  Alfred 
Austin  and  myself,  Lawson  of  the  Telegraph,  who  came 
occasionally,  and  William  Stebbing,  of  the  Times,  were, 
I  think,  the  chief  representatives  of  the  Unionist  Press 
in  Lady  Jeune's  multifarious  assemblies.  But  soldiers 
and  sailors,  ambassadors  and  princes,  lawyers  and 
authors,  all  passed  through  the  rooms  in  turn.  Sir 
James  Knowles  was  usually  in  evidence  at  Lady  Jeune's, 
and  I  met  both  Mr.  Macmillan  and  Mr.  Prothero  there 
occasionally. 

I  think  the  last  time  I  ever  dined  in  Harley  Street 
was  at  a  small  party  on  a  Sunday.  The  Duke  of  Leeds 
was  there  and  Colonel  Saunderson,  and  Edward  Pember, 
the   well-known   Parliamentary   counsel,   whom   I   had 


140  TORY    MEMORIES. 

known  for  a  long  time.  He  began  as  an  uncompromis- 
ing Tory  and  used  to  write  for  the  Press.  He  then 
edged  away  to  Liberahsm,  but  finally  rejoined  his 
old  friends  when  Gladstonianism  became  too  much  for 
him.  I  remember  hearing  him  speak  strongly  on  the 
subject  of  the  Tory  County  Government  Bill  of  1888, 
alleging  that  it  was  impossible  for  county  business  to  be 
done  better  than  it  was  at  Quarter  Sessions.  **  I  have 
seen/'  he  said,  '*  a  plain  country  gentleman  deliver  a  long 
and  complicated  statement  involving  the  study  and 
mastery  of  a  pile  of  documents,  with  a  clearness  and  con- 
ciseness and  knowledge  of  business  which  left  nothing 
to  be  desired.  And  all  this  he  did  for  nothing — a  task 
which  I  wouldn't  have  undertaken  myself  for  a  fifty- 
guinea  brief." 

Lady  Jeune's  Sunday  afternoons  were  always  very 
pleasant ;  one  was  sure  to  see  somebody  worth 
seeing  and  hear  something  worth  hearing.  Once  I 
found  quite  a  family  party  there  :  Lady  Jeune's  two 
pretty  daughters  and  their  cousins,  pretty  girls  also, 
though  in  a  different  style,  the  daughters  of  the 
present  Lord  Stanley  of  Alderley.  Miss  Madeleine  Stanley 
(the  present  Mrs.  St.  John  Brodrick)  and  Miss  Dorothy 
Stanley  (the  present  Mrs.  AUhusen)  were  then  quite 
young,  and  indeed  I  remember  them  as  children.  As 
they  grew  up  they  helped  Lady  Jeune  to  entertain  her 
Sunday  friends,  and  I  had  many  pleasant  conversations 
with  both  of  them. 

In  the  summer  of  1885  I  think.  Lady  Jeune  took  a 
house  near  Manningtree,  in  Essex,  and  was  kind  enough 
to  invite  me  to  pass  a  night  there,  as  I  was  staying  in 
the  neighbourhood.  The  two  young  ladies  were  then 
children  interested  in  tame  rabbits  and  such-Uke  pets. 


TORY    LADIES.  141 

but  as  I  went  away  early  the  next  morning  I  had  no  time 
to  inspect  their  menagerie.     In  the  evening  after  dinner 
Lady  Jeune  told  us  some  interesting  stories  of  the  old 
Scotch  Jacobites,  one  of  which   I  introduced  into  an 
article  in  the  Quarterly  Review  for  October,  1899,  under 
the  title  of  ''  Studies  of  the  Torty-five/'     As  a  genuine 
family  tradition,   I  cannot  help  repeating  it  here.     It 
was   Lady   Jeune's   grandmother   who   could   speak   of 
her  acquaintance  with  ''  Long  Peg,*'  the  sobriquet  by 
which    a    famous   old   Scotswoman    was    long    known. 
As  a  young  girl  Peg  had  come  to  Brahan  Castle  with  a 
message  from  the  Prince,  who  was  there  on  a  visit  to 
Lady  Fortrose,  the  daughter-in-law  of  the  attainted  Earl 
of   Seaforth,  who  had  been  '*  out ''  in  '^  the  'Fifteen." 
Peggy  was  among  the  privileged  few  who  were  admitted 
by  Lady  Fortrose  to  peep  at  the  Prince  through  the 
drawing-room   door   as   he   drank   his   coffee  ;    and  she 
afterwards    begged    of    her    sympathetic    hostess    the 
coffee  cup  which   he  had  used,  and  which  no   meaner 
lips   were   ever  allowed  to   touch.     Many  years  after- 
wards  she   obtained  another   relic   from  Mrs.   Stewart 
Mackenzie,  whose   husband    succeeded    to    the    family 
estates  in   1784,   and    was    created    Lord    Seaforth   in 
1797.     This  was  an  old  green  velvet  cushion  on  which 
the  Prince  had  rested  his  feet.      It   is   needless  to  say 
that  both  precious  relics  were  religiously  preserved,  and 
when  Peg  died  early  in  the  last  century  she  desired  that 
they  might  be  buried  with  her. 

This  is  a  Jacobite  memory,  but  it  is  not  out  of  place 
among  Tory  memories,  and  I  have  elsewhere  in  these 
pages  recorded  other  traces  of  a  creed  which  lingered 
longer  in  these  islands  than  is  commonly  supposed. 

Lady   Jeune — I    never   think   of   her   as    Lady    St. 


142  TORY    MEMORIES. 

Helier — was  a  *'  Tory  lady  "  of  the  first  class,  quite 
equal,  I  should  say,  to  Lady  Deloraine,  whom,  oddly 
enough,  in  some  accidental  particulars  she  much  re- 
sembles. During  the  last  few  years  I  have  seen  com- 
paratively Httle  of  her — my  increasing  deafness  has 
made  me  rather  avoid  Society  than  endeavour  to  keep 
up  my  acquaintance  with  it  by  the  usual  methods. 

It  was  at  a  dinner  at  Lady  Jeune's  that  I  first  met 
Lady  Ridley,  then  the  wife  of  Sir  Matthew  Ridley,  who 
became  Secretary  of  State  in  1895.  She  was  a  beau- 
tiful woman,  and  her  receptions  at  Carlton  House 
Terrace  were  among  the  most  brilliant  of  the  season. 
Her  rooms  were  much  larger  than  Lady  Jeune's,  and 
it  was  some  time  in  the  'eighties  when  I  first  had  the 
privilege  of  entering  them.  I  continued  to  receive  cards 
for  them  down  to  the  date  of  her  death,  in  1899. 
Early  in  that  year  she  had  issued  cards  for  the  Wed- 
nesdays and  Saturdays  in  March,  and  it  was  on  the 
very  morning  of  the  first  Wednesday  that  she  found 
herself  too  ill  to  see  company.  The  receptions  were 
postponed,  and  never,  alas !  resumed.  It  was  in  the 
summer,  often  late  in  July — for  the  season  lasted  longer 
then — that  her  rooms  were  more  generally  thrown  open 
when  I  first  knew  her.  She  was  a  staunch  *'  Tory 
lady,*'  perhaps  more  so  even  than  Lady  Jeune,  though 
neither  she  nor  her  husband  came  of  a  Tory  family.  Sir 
Matthew's  father  was  the  Whig  member  who  in  1818 
proposed  Mr.  Wynn  for  the  Speakership  in  opposition 
to  the  Tory  candidate,  Mr.  Manners  Sutton.  And  it 
was  curious  that,  by  the  irony  of  fate.  Sir  Matthew 
himself,  when  Tory  candidate  for  the  chair  in  1895, 
was  opposed  and  defeated  by  the  Liberal  candidate, 
Mr.  Gully.     But  there  were  no  traces  of  these  ante- 


TORY    LADIES.  143 

cedents  in  the  Carlton  House  Terrace  of  1890.  Lady 
Ridley's  assemblies  were  less  miscellaneous  than  Lady 
Jeune's.  I  don't  remember  seeing  any  actors  or  actresses 
there  except  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Kendal,  who  were  usually 
surrounded  by  an  admiring  throng,  Mr.  Kendal  look- 
ing very  proud  of  his  wife. 

I  remember  meeting  there  a  lady  who  was  a  great 
friend  of  Sir  Stafford  Northcote,  on  the  night  when  it 
first  became  known  that  he  was  to  leave  the  Foreign 
Office  to  make  way  for  Lord  Salisbury.  Lord  Iddes- 
leigh,  as  he  then  was,  had  by  some  accident  seen  the 
change  announced  in  the  newspapers  before  he  re- 
ceived any  notice  of  it  from  Lord  Salisbury,  then  the 
head  of  the  Government.  This  was  in  the  month  of 
January,  1887.  The  retirement  of  Lord  Randolph 
Churchill  from  the  Exchequer  and  Leadership  of  the 
House  of  Commons  led  to  Mr.  W.  H.  Smith  being 
appointed  Leader,  and  also  First  Lord  of  the  Treasury, 
a  post  hitherto  held  by  Lord  SaHsbury,  who  now  felt 
it  necessary  to  take  the  Foreign  Office.  There  was  great 
diversity  of  opinion  with  regard  to  the  treatment  of 
Lord  Iddesleigh  in  this  affair.  He  was  the  last  man 
to  complain,  but  he  must  have  felt  that  scant  considera- 
tion had  been  shown  him.  When  in  1881  Sir  Stafford 
Northcote  had  become  Leader  of  the  Opposition,  Lord 
Randolph  christened  him  ''  the  Goat,*'  and  the  bulk  of 
the  Tory  Party  who  supported  him  shared  the  appel- 
lation. The  Fourth  Party,  which  consisted  of  seven- 
teen sheep  and  four  shepherds,  naturally  held  *'  the 
Goats  "  in  great  contempt,  and  it  became  one  of  their 
chief  objects  to  hunt  down  the  leader  of  the  flock. 
At  this  time  Mr.  Balfour  had  ceased  to  be  a  member 
of  the  party. 


144  TORY    MEMORIES. 

Whatever  justification  may  have  existed  for  these 
attacks,  it  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  the  victim  of  them 
could  have  regarded  with  much  complacency  the  eleva- 
tion of  the  chief  promoter  of  them  into  his  own  place 
as  Leader  of  the  House,  thereby  seeming  to  give  colour 
to  all  the  charges  which  the  Fourth  Party  had  brought 
against  him.  His  dismissal — for  it  came  to  that — from 
the  Foreign  Office  was  only  the  last  straw,  and  the 
indignation  of  his  friends  was,  I  think,  very  natural. 
The  Tory  lady  whom  I  met  at  Lady  Ridley's  stamped 
her  httle  foot  upon  the  ground,  declaring  it  was  the 
result  of  a  disgraceful  intrigue  which  had  been  brewing 
for  years.  I  will  not  enter  upon  this  question  ;  but  I 
remember  the  excitement  it  created  in  Lady  Ridley's 
drawing-room,  where  little  groups  of  ladies  and  gentle- 
men more  or  less  interested  in  politics  stood  about  dis- 
cussing it. 

Lady  Ridley,  however,  though  a  great  political  lady, 
aimed  at  something  more  than  making  her  house  the 
rendezvous  of  a  party.  I  remember  one  occasion  at  the 
end  of  the  season,  and  at  the  end  of  her  last  reception, 
when  she  did  me  the  honour  to  take  me  aside  and  say 
that  I  had  been  so  very  good  and  so  constant  (in  fact, 
I  hadn't  missed  one  of  her  parties — they  were  too  good) 
that  she  hoped  I  would  help  her  in  her  design  of  es- 
tablishing ''  a  little  salon."  I  placed  myself  entirely 
at  her  service,  as  anyone  may  suppose.  But  how 
Lady  Ridley  could  have  imagined  it  possible  I  could 
be  of  any  service  to  her  in  carrying  out  such  a 
project,  I  never  could  understand.  I  should  doubt, 
indeed,  whether  such  a  thing  was  possible  at  that  time 
in  London,  whatever  allies  she  might  have  had.  What 
Holland  House  may  have  been  like  once  upon  a  time, 


TORY   LADIES.  145 

I  don't  know,  and  have  never  met  with  anyone  who  did: 
Even  Mr.  Thackeray  used  to  say,  ''  I  never  saw  a  Whig, 
though  I  have  often  wished  I  was  one."  The  Whig 
Party  are  said  to  have  made  the  most  of  their  social 
advantages.  And  their  long  monopoly  of  the  Court  in 
the  eighteenth  century  had  probably  schooled  the  Whig 
ladies  better  than  the  Tory  in  all  those  arts  and  witch- 
eries essential  to  success  in  the  pretty  game  they  played. 
But  if  Holland  House  were  revived  to-morrow,  would 
it  have  the  kind  of  political  influence  which  it  had  a 
hundred  years  ago  ?  Were  another  Lady  Palmerston 
to  rise  out  of  the  Whig  ranks,  could  she,  at  this  time  of 
day,  create  another  Cambridge  House  ?  Would  the 
'*  Labour  Party  ''  care  for  her  smiles,  or  the  Nationalists 
be  disarmed  by  her  allurements  ?  Before  the  great  lady 
reappears  who  is  to  play  this  part  over  again,  many 
other  changes  must  happen,  of  which  there  are  no  signs 
as  yet. 

Of  Lady  Carnarvon  I  have  spoken  in  an  earlier 
chapter.  While  Lord  Carnarvon  still  lived  she  held  re- 
ceptions in  Portman  Square,  and  I  remember  meeting 
there  Mr.  Rider  Haggard.  After  her  husband's  death,  she 
took  a  house  in  Charles  Street,  Berkeley  Square,  with 
smaller  rooms,  which  I  have  seen  as  full  as  they  could 
hold.  But  I  think  I  saw  more  political  notabilities  at 
Lady  Stanhope's.  It  was  at  Lady  Stanhope's  that  I 
was  for  the  first  and  only  time  in  my  Hfe  in  the  same 
room  with  Mr.  Gladstone — that  is,  as  far  as  I  can 
recollect,  for  I  think  he  must  have  been  present  some- 
times at  other  large  parties.  But  on  this  occasion  I 
was  close  to  him.  He  was  not  speaking  to  anybody, 
but  kept  walking  backwards  and  forwards  in  a  corner 
of   the   room   like  a   caged  tiger,    and,    as    I   thought 

K 


146  TORY    MEMORIES. 

at  the  moment,  gnashing  his  teeth !  But  I  beHeve  he 
was  only  taking  lozenges,  or  something  of  that  kind 
— either  for  neuralgia  or  for  his  throat. 

At  Lady  Salisbury's  receptions,  whether  in  Arling- 
ton Street  or  at  the  Foreign  Office,  of  course  we  met 
all  the  world.  Lord  Salisbury  himself,  who  was  gener- 
ally supposed  to  preserve  a  somewhat  grave  exterior, 
would  at  these  parties  sometimes  indulge  in  hearty 
laughter.  I  remember  Sir  James  Knowles  amusing 
him  very  much  about  something,  when  he  laughed  all 
over  —  lips,  legs,  and  arms.  I  used  to  meet  here 
Musurus,  whom  I  always  liked,  but  Lord  Salisbury  didn't. 
He  once  told  me  that  he  thought  the  Turkish  Am- 
bassador a  very  stupid  man.  I  certainly  never  found 
him  so ;  for  in  his  own  house,  when  once  squatted  on 
the  sofa  and  in  for  a  talk,  he  was  one  of  the  most  amus- 
ing men  I  ever  came  across.  Lord  Salisbury,  however, 
may  have  found  him  slow  at  understanding  the  Turkish 
policy  of  the  Government.  But  of  this  more  presently. 
This  was  the  only  house,  I  think,  at  which  I  ever  met 
the  late  Lord  Stanley  of  Alderley,  of  whom  likewise 
I  shall  have  more  to  say  hereafter.  His  deafness  made 
him  averse  to  general  society.  But  he  used  to  come  to 
Lord  Salisbury's,  and  it  was  good  to  stand  next  to  him 
at  a  party  of  that  kind.  His  remarks  were  usually  of  a 
very  original  character.  Sir  Theodore  and  Lady  Martin 
I  have  seen  at  Arlington  Street.  Sir  Theodore  and 
Professor  Aytoun  were  two  pillars  of  Toryism,  and  Lady 
Martin  herself  was  a  most  gracious  hostess.  She  had 
finally  retired  from  the  stage  at  the  time  I  am  speaking 
of.  But  it  was  not  long  before  that  she  said  to  a 
friend  of  mine  :  ''  If  you'll  find  a  Romeo,  I'll  find  a 
Juliet."     But  I  don't  think  she  ever  did. 


TORY    LADIES.  147 

The  last  time  I  saw  her  was  at  the  unveihng  of  Sir 
Walter  Scott's  bust  in  Westminster  Abbey  by  the  Duke 
of  Buccleuch.  I  walked  away  from  the  Abbey  with 
Mr.  Balfour,  who,  referring  to  what  he  had  said  in 
his  speech  about  Byron  and  Richardson,  asked  me 
whether  I  was  a  disciple  of  the  Lake  School,  or  words 
to  that  effect.  I  in  turn  asked  him  whether  he  thought 
Macaulay  was  right  in  saying  that  Byron  was  the  in- 
terpreter of  the  Lake  School  to  the  general  public, 
adding  that  I  thought  nobody  would  ever  have  really 
understood  Wordsworth  any  the  better  by  reading 
Byron.  If  I  remember  aright,  he  said  he  thought 
so,  too. 

The  Duchess  of  Rutland  was  at  home  on  Sunday 
afternoons  at  Cambridge  Gate.  I  used  to  go  there 
when  I  could,  for  the  Duchess  was  very  nice  to  talk  to, 
and  there  was  httle  Lady  Victoria,  too,  as  amusing  as 
she  had  been  at  Belvoir.  "  Here's  a  gentleman,"  said 
the  Duke,  ''  who  says  he  remembers  you  at  Belvoir.'' 
'*  Oh,  does  he  ?  "  was  the  tart  reply  of  the  young  lady, 
in  a  tone  of  decided  contempt. 

Of  Lady  Winifred  Herbert,  who  married  first  Cap- 
tain Byng,  and  afterwards  Herbert  Gardiner,  now  Lord 
Burghclere,  I  saw  very  little  after  her  marriage.  A 
good  many  years  had  elapsed  when  I  went  to  a  party 
at  her  house,  when  she  greeted  me  with  the  exclama- 
tion, ''  Why,  you  are  quite  an  apparition  !  "  But  my 
lamp  of  memory  is  burning  very  low  now,  and  when  I 
have  paid  my  respects  to  Mrs.  St.  John  Brodrick  I 
must  take  my  leave  of  ladies'  society  for  a  while.  Mrs. 
Brodrick,  soon  after  her  marriage,  used  to  receive  in 
Portland  Place,  and  her  rooms  used  to  fill  well.  As 
the  very  pretty  young  wife  of  a  Tory  Cabinet  Minister, 


148  TORY    MEMORIES. 

she  was  naturally  a  favourite  with  the  party  ;  but  I 
had  known  her  so  long  that  we  talked  rather  about 
people  and  books  than  about  politics.  It  was  in  Port- 
land Place,  too,  that  I  last  saw  Mrs.  Allhusen.  This 
was  just  before  the  last  General  Election,  in  the  winter 
of  1906.  Mr.  Allhusen  was  then  sitting  member  for 
Hackney,  and  they  had  taken  a  house,  so  his  wife  told 
me,  in  that  quarter  of  the  town  to  facilitate  canvassing. 
But  if  a  Helen  had  come  to  the  rescue  nothing  could 
have  averted  the  torrent  of  Radicalism  which  then 
swept  over  England.  Mr.  Allhusen  was  defeated  by 
Mr.  Spicer,  though  only  by  a  small  majority  of  about 
600.  A  Hke  disappointment  befel  her  sister,  for  Mr. 
St.  John  Brodrick  lost  his  seat  for  the  Guildford  Division 
to  Mr.  Cowan. 


To  face  page  148. 


y-l  /C^t^i^-d, 


CHAPTER    XII. 

TORY  ARCADIA.* 

The  Halfords  —  Wistow  —  Sir  Robert  Peel's  Frigidity  —  The  Old 
Duke  of  Cambridge — His  Dialogue  with  a  Curate — Likened  to 
the  Hippopotamus — A  Question  of  Clerical  Etiquette — Sir  Henry- 
Half  or  d,  the  Physician — Could  the  Duke  of  York  have  Prevented 
the  Revolution  of  1828-32  ? — The  Second  Sir  Henry  Halford — 
The  Last  of  the  Chanticleers — His  Love  for  the  Classics — The 
Family  becomes  Extinct — The  New  Poor  Law — A  Hunt  Break- 
fast at  Quom — Boys  and  Port  Wine — The  Economics  of  County 
Influence — Parsons  of   Arcadia — Eccentrics. 

The  following  are  all  personal  experiences  relating  to 
rural  conditions,  such  as  they  were  before  the  days 
of  Mr.  Arch  and  agricultural  depression.  I  was  brought 
up  on  terms  of  great  intimacy  with  the  Halford 
family,  f  We  lived  at  Kilby,  a  village  about  a  mile  from 
Wistow,  and  the  same  distance  from  Newton  Harcourt, 
where  in  the  lifetime  of  the  old  physician,  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Halford  lived.  My  father  was  vicar  of  the  three 
parishes.  But  there  was  no  village  at  Wistow.  There 
had  been  one  in  former  days,  and  part  of  the  land  on 
which  it  once  stood  is  covered  by  a  fine  piece  of  water 
lying  just  below  the  Hall,  which  stands  upon  a  rising 
ground  and  is  approached  through  an  avenue  of  im- 
memorial elms. 

The    Halfords   were   a   strictly   Tory   family.      The 

*  Some  few  anecdotes  in  the  earlier  part  of  this  chapter  are  repub- 
lished, with  Mr.  John  Murray's  permission,  from  the  Quarterly  Review. 
t  See  post,  pp.  157-160. 

149 


150  TORY   MEMORIES. 

estate  was  left  by  the  last  baronet  of  the  old  line, 
Sir  Charles  Halford,  who  died  in  1780,  to  the  de- 
scendants of  Elizabeth  Halford,  who,  in  the  middle 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  married  a  Leicester  alderman 
whose  daughter  in  turn  married  Dr.  James  Vaughan, 
a  physician  of  great  repute  in  the  town  of  Leicester. 
Thus  his  eldest  son,  at  the  death  of  Sir  Charles's 
widow — who,  after  her  husband's  death,  married  Lord 
Denbigh — came  into  the  Wistow  property.  He  had 
previously  been  created  a  baronet  by  George  IIL,  and 
he  now  took  the  name,  and  became  Sir  Henry  Halford 
of  Wistow,  the  first  of  a  new  line  of  baronets.  He 
was  very  successful  in  his  profession,  and  enjoyed  for 
many  years  a  highly  lucrative  practice.  He  has  been 
called  the  Chesterfield  of  physicians.  That  he  owed 
something  to  his  courtly  manners — partly  natural  to  him, 
but  improved  by  his  long  acquaintance  with  the  Court, 
and  by  the  wide  practice  among  the  aristocracy  which 
the  Court  physician  to  four  sovereigns  in  succession  was 
certain  to  command — is  likely  enough.  So  popular  was 
he  with  William  IV.  that  Lady  Jersey  told  my  father 
in  1836,  when  he  asked  her  to  try  to  bring  some  little 
publication  before  the  notice  of  the  King,  that  he 
could  have  no  better  introduction  than  Sir  Henry's. 
'*  You  have  Sir  Henry  Halford,"  she  said;  "you  have 
only  to  mention  his  name  and  the  Palace  gates  will 
fly  open." 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  Sir  Henry  was  a  Tory  of 
the  Tories,  and  he  represented  the  old  school  in  more 
ways  than  one.  His  dress  was  of  the  date  of  the  Regency. 
He  wore  powder  in  his  hair,  short  nankeen  trousers  in 
summer,  and  usually  a  snuff-coloured  coat.  His  house, 
too,  has  every  right  to  be  celebrated  in  Tory  memories. 


TORY    ARCADIA.  151 

Sir  Richard  Halford,  in  the  seventeenth  century,  was 
at  the  head  of  the  Tory  interest  in  South  Leicestershire, 
and  Charles  I.'s  manager.  The  King  himself  slept  at 
Wistow  before  the  battle  of  Naseby,  of  which  the 
scene  is  some  ten  or  twelve  miles  distant ;  and  though 
the  Hall  has  since  been  enlarged,  his  room  has  been 
carefully  preserved,  and  I  myself  have  had  the  honour 
of  sleeping  in  it.  A  saddle,  spurs,  and  a  sword  which 
he  left  behind  were  carefully  preserved  at  Wistow; 
and,  in  fact,  the  house  was  redolent  of  Torpsm.  Sir 
Henry  married  a  daughter  of  Lord  St.  John  of 
Bletsoe,  a  lady  who  had  known  Mr.  Pitt.  On  one 
occasion  when  she  sat  down  to  play  chess  with  a 
visitor  she  said,  **  Ah,  I  once  used  to  play  chess  with 
a  very  great  man,''  and  it  was  always  assumed  that 
she  meant  Mr.  Pitt.  I  can  just  recollect  her,  and  no 
more. 

Sir  Henry  was  a  great  whist  player,  and  so  was  my 
father — players,  that  is,  of  the  old  school,  but  very  good 
both  of  them,  as  men  played  then  at  the  most  scientific 
tables.  The  baronet  and  the  parson  knew  each  other's 
game,  and  each  was  hard  to  beat  when  they  got  together, 
and  during  Sir  Henry's  stay  at  Wistow  my  father  was 
usually  at  the  Hall  one  evening  a  week  at  the  least.  He 
was  always  invited  to  meet  any  distinguished  company 
whom  Sir  Henry  entertained  at  Wistow.  Sir  Robert 
Peel  came  there  once  ;  and  the  old  Duke  of  Cambridge, 
father  of  his  late  Royal  Highness  the  Commander-in- 
Chief.  Of  Sir  Robert  Peel  my  father's  accounts  always 
reminded  me  of  the  "  Chicken's  "  description  of  Dombey : 
'*  he  was  as  stiff  a  cove  as  ever  he  see  "  ;  but  that, 
nevertheless,  ''it  was  within  the  resources  of  science  to 
double  him  up."    Lord  Beaconsfield,  who  did  double  him 


152  TORY    MEMORIES. 

up,  has  noticed  in  the  Life  of  Lord  George  Bentinck 
the  defects  of  manner  under  which  Peel  laboured. 
*'  Sir  Robert  Peel  had  a  bad  manner,  of  which  he 
was  conscious ;  he  was  by  nature  very  shy,  but 
forced  early  in  life  into  eminent  positions,  he  had 
formed  an  artificial  manner,  haughtily  stiff  or  oppres- 
sively bland,  of  which,  generally  speaking,  he  could 
not  divest  himself.''  My  father,  who  was  himself  the 
most  genial  of  mankind,  was  struck  by  the  frigidity 
of  the  great  man,  and  the  distance  he  observed  to- 
wards the  guests  who  had  been  invited  to  meet  him. 
Unlike  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  he  was,  except  in  the  com- 
pany of  two  or  three  very  intimate  friends,  seen  to  less 
advantage  in  his  *'  social  hour ''  than  at  any  other 
time. 

A  very  different  man  indeed  was  the  old  Duke,  who 
came  to  Wistow,  I  think,  several  times,  and  my  father 
met  him  at  dinner  more  than  once.  He  dined  there  one 
Sunday,  when,  I  think,  there  was  no  other  guest.  This 
was  long  after  Lady  Halford's  death,  when  Sir  Henry's 
niece.  Miss  Vaughan,  sat  at  the  head  of  his  table.  The 
Duke,  in  a  good-humoured,  jolly  way,  expressed  his 
surprise  to  his  hostess  that  there  was  no  roast  beef  and 
plum  pudding  on  the  table.  "  Why,"  he  said,  ''  when 
I  dine  with  my  sister  Molly  on  Sunday,  we  always  have 
roast  beef  and  plum  pudding."  One  day,  soon  after  this, 
the  curate  of  a  neighbouring  parish  was  asked  to  meet 
his  Royal  Highness.  He  was  a  man  of  good  family,  and 
very  popular  in  the  neighbourhood,  and  the  Duke's 
idea  of  a  clergyman's  occupations  did  not  apparently 
embrace  much  pastoral  duty.  After  dinner  he  began  a 
conversation  with  him  in  an  easy,  friendly  manner. 
"  And   what   are   your   pursuits,   sir  ?     Do   you   hunt. 


TORY    ARCADIA.  153 

sir  ?  *'  "  No,  sir/'  ''  Ah,  then,  you  shoot,  I  suppose  ?  '' 
"  No,  sir/'  ''  H'm,  a  fisherman,  eh  ?  ''  ''  No,  sir  ;  I 
don't  care  much  for  fishing."  The  Duke  was  puzzled. 
''  You  read  a  good  deal — perhaps  a  scholar,  eh  ?  "  *'  No, 
sir  ;  I'm  afraid  I'm  no  great  reader."  ''  Then  what  the 
devil  do  you  do  ?  " 

The  Duke's  eccentricities  are  well  known.  In 
church,  when  he  repeated  the  verse  in  the  Psalms,  '*  Why 
hop  ye  so,  ye  high  hills  ?  "  he  thought  it  necessary  to 
stoop  down  and  tell  Sir  Henry's  grandson,  then  a  boy 
of  eleven  or  twelve  years  of  age,  that  *'  the  thing  was 
impossible."  He  was  generally  known  in  his  later  years 
as  the  good  duke,  for  no  other  reason,  it  would  seem, 
than  because  he  was  always  good-natured  and  always 
willing  to  preside  at  public  dinners,  or  discharge  any 
other  functions  which  required  the  presence  of  Royalty. 
A  witty  Oxford  undergraduate  wrote  a  paper,  which 
Dickens  pubhshed  in  Household  Words,  called  ''  The 
Good  Hippopotamus,"  showing  that  a  grateful  public 
were  bound  to  recognise  in  this  animal  the  same  social 
virtues  which  pleased  them  so  greatly  in  the  Duke. 
The  public  could  come  and  see  him  eat  and  bathe  and 
show  himself  generally  for  their  amusement,  and  what 
did  the  Duke  do  more  ?  It  was  not  meant  for  a  spiteful 
satire,  nor  was  it  ever  taken  as  such ;  and  the  Duke 
himself,  if  he  ever  saw  it,  probably  had  a  hearty  laugh 
over  it.  The  housemaids  at  Wistow,  when  they  went 
about  their  work  in  the  morning,  used  to  hear  his  Royal 
Highness  praying  most  fervently,  as  the  reapers  reap- 
ing early  heard  the  Lady  of  Shalott. 

It  would  be  curious  if  what  I  am  now  going  to  men- 
tion was  due  to  any  dim  tradition  of  eighteenth-century 
Toryism,    when    the    country    gentlemen    didn't    care 


154  TORY   MEMORIES. 

much  about  the  Bishops,  who  were  generally  Whigs, 
while  the  country  clergy  were  most  of  them  staunch 
Tories.  The  Tory  fox-hunter  in  the  Freeholder  tells 
Addison  that  his  own  county  is  a  very  happy  one  : 
*'  there's  not  a  single  Presbyterian  in  it  except  the 
Bishop.'*  Now  it  so  happened  that  one  day,  when  Bishop 
Blomfield  was  a  guest  at  Wistow,  my  father  was  asked 
to  dine,  and  before  they  sat  down  Sir  Henry  called  on 
my  father  as  vicar  of  the  parish  to  say  grace,  upon 
which  the  Bishop  immediately  jumped  up  and  said  it 
himself.  Sir  Henry,  one  would  think,  must  have  been 
perfectly  well  acquainted  with  clerical  etiquette  in 
such  matters,  and  Bishop  Blomfield  was  not  the  man  to 
have  committed  what,  unless  he  was  strictly  in  order, 
would  have  been  an  act  of  great  rudeness. 

The  old  physician's  Toryism  showed  itself  in  another 
way.  In  the  parish  of  Kilby,  and  partially  in  that 
of  Newton,  he  made  my  father  his  representative,  with 
the  result  that  a  kind  of  paternal  government  prevailed 
in  these  villages  during  my  father's  lifetime.  His 
word  was  law.  But  as  he  very  seldom  used  a  hard  one, 
the  villagers  reposed  easily  under  the  mild  sway  of 
one  who  thoroughly  understood  them,  and  whom  they 
themselves  understood.  As  a  magistrate,  he  was  said 
to  err  too  much  on  the  side  of  leniency,  and  one  rather 
notorious  character  in  the  neighbourhood  said  he  always 
liked  to  go  before  ''  the  old  gentleman  as  drove  the  white 
pony."  He  was  a  Tory  of  that  time  when,  notwith- 
standing the  disturbances  on  the  Continent,  and  some 
riots  and  conspiracies  at  home,  England,  on  the  whole, 
reposed  peacefully  under  the  shadow  of  the  old  Con- 
stitution, which,  whatever  its  faults,  rested  on  a  solid 
principle,  and  seemed  for  many  years  unlikely  to  be 


TORY   ARCADIA.  155 

shaken  by  anything  that  could  happen.     Sir  WiUiam 
Heathcote,  writing  to  a  friend  in  the  year  1826,  speaks 
of    "  the   poHtical   agitation,    which,    partly   from   the 
circumstances  of  the  times,  partly  from  the  course  of 
legislation,   conducted  with   no   conceivable  object,   as 
far  as   I  can  make  out,  except  to  produce  this  very 
result,  now  pervades  and  poisons  the  ordinary  current 
of  everyday  life  in  a  manner  of  which  our  young  days 
afforded  no  example,  and  which  makes  life  in  England 
necessarily  more  or  less  miserable,  at  least  to  a  person  of 
my  temperament,  opinions,  and  prejudices/*     The  repeal 
of  the  Test  and  Corporation  Acts,  followed  by  Roman 
Catholic  Emancipation,  came  hke  claps  of  thunder  in 
a   clear  sky.     Dm"ing   the   whole   of   Lord   LiverpooFs 
Administration,  the  upper  and  middle  classes  of  English 
society  enjoyed  a  feeUng  of  security  to  which  they  have 
since   been   strangers.     Then,   says   Disraeh,    "  all   was 
blooming,  sunshine  and  odour ;    not  a  breeze  disturbed 
the  meridian  splendour.'*     But  the  very  silence  might 
have  been  thought  ominous.   With  the  measures  I  have 
named,  and  the  Reform  Bill  which  followed,  the  old 
Constitution   fell   and   buried   under   its   ruins   the   old 
Toryism  in  which  my  father  and  his  old  friend,  Sir 
Henry,  had  been  bred. 

I  was  too  young  to  feel  anything  even  of  the  ground 
swell  after  the  great  storm  ;  but  as  I  grew  older  and 
heard  my  father  talk  of  it,  I  began  to  understand  the 
shock  which  the  Revolution  of  1828-32  must  have  been 
to  the  great  body  of  the  clergy  and  gentry  who  experi- 
enced it.  It  seems  to  have  been  commonly  believed 
by  them  that  if  the  Duke  of  York  had  lived,  no  such 
revolution  would  have  occurred  ;  and  no  doubt  if  the 
Romish  disabiUties  had  not  been  repealed,  the  nomina- 


156  TORY   MEMORIES. 

tion  boroughs  would  not  have  been  abolished.  Mr. 
Disraeli  has  said  that  the  Duke  of  Wellington  ''  preci- 
pitated a  revolution  which  might  have  been  delayed  for 
half  a  century,  and  never  need  have  occurred  at  all  in 
so  aggravated  a  form."  My  father  and  mother  used  to 
talk  as  if  they  partly  believed  this,  and  thought  that 
any  attempt  at  Roman  Catholic  Emancipation  with 
the  Duke  of  York  upon  the  throne  would  have  been  met 
as  it  was  in  1806.  The  Tories  of  that  date  had  not  yet 
been  educated  by  the  Oxford  movement.  The  Toryism 
of  such  men  as  Hurrell  Froude  would  have  been  as  a 
strange  language  to  them.  They  were,  or  they  had 
been  brought  up  to  be,  strongly  anti-Romanist.  They 
said  that  Mr.  Pitt,  who  had  first  proposed  Emanci- 
pation, had  afterwards  repented,  and  could  not  be 
quoted  against  them.  Such  was  their  reading  of 
history. 

My  father  and  mother,  in  183 1,  were  staying  with  the 
Farnhams  at  Quorn,  a  village  in  North  Leicestershire 
about  two  miles  from  Loughborough,  and  only  seventeen 
from  Nottingham.  They  were  there  when  Nottingham 
Castle  was  burned  by  the  rioters,  and  Mrs.  Musters  was 
driven  from  her  house  at  Colwich — which  was  likewise 
fired  by  the  mob — and  compelled  to  take  refuge  in  the 
adjoining  shrubberies  at  the  cost  of  her  life  through  ex- 
posure to  the  cold.  The  alarm  spread  far  beyond  Not- 
tingham, and  I  have  often  heard  my  father  tell  how  they 
sat  up  all  night  at  Quorn.  in  hourly  dread  of  a  similar 
attack,  as  both  Mr.  Musters  and  Mr.  Farnham  (my  god- 
father, by  the  bye)  were  well-known  Tories.  It  is  not 
surprising  that  the  impression  made  on  men's  minds 
by  such  events  as  these  and  the  policy  to  which  they 
were  attributed  should  have  been  deep  and  permanent ; 


TORY    ARCADIA.  157 

nor  was  it  likely  to  be  effaced  by  the  legislation  which 
immediately  followed. 

Mr.  Halford,  Sir  Henry's  eldest  son,  was  returned 
for  South  Leicestershire  to  the  first  reformed  Parlia- 
ment, a  seat  which  he  held  for  twenty-five  years,  when 
he  was  succeeded  by  Lord  Curzon.  He  early  showed 
himself  entitled  to  the  name  of  Tory  in  its  best  sense 
by  taking  up  the  cause  of  the  working  classes  in  his  own 
county.  The  mantle  of  Mr.  Sadler  had  fallen  on  him, 
and  he  led  the  attack  on  the  Truck  system  with  great 
persistency  till  the  cause  was  finally  taken  up  by  Lord 
Ashley.  But  that  it  was  ever  taken  up  at  all  was  in 
great  measure  due  to  Mr.  Halford.  His  father  died  when 
I  was  almost  a  child  ;  but  the  son,  the  second  Sir  Henry, 
I  remember  well.  He  was  a  well-read  man,  a  good 
classical  scholar,  and  had  a  great  fund  of  humour.  He 
is  said  to  have  been  the  last  of  the  chanticleers  in  the 
House  of  Commons.  He  could  crow  better  than  any 
man  in  the  House  when  it  was  thought  desirable  either 
to  deride  a  Ministerial  speaker  or  stop  a  Parliamentary 
bore.  This  talent  naturally  endeared  him  very  much 
to  the  Tory  benches ;  but  the  reformed  House  of 
Commons  gradually  became  too  respectable  to  appre- 
ciate this  fine  natural  gift  at  its  proper  value  ;  and  it 
soon  fell  into  disuse,  so  much  so  that  I  have  heard  my 
father  say  it  was  doubtful  if  a  single  cock  was  to  be 
found  in  the  House  of  Commons  ten  years  after  the 
Reform  Bill.  I  feel  it  a  great  privilege  to  have  person- 
ally known  the  last  specimen  of  this  extinct  species. 

When  he  had  given  up  crowing,  this  excellent  Tory 
gentleman  returned,  like  Lord  Grenville,  to  his  classics. 
He  had  a  very  good  memory,  and  was  very  ready  with 
his  applications.     I   remember  when   I   had  gone  out 


158  TORY    MEMORIES. 

to  look  for  a  boy  who  had  been  sent  to  a  neighbouring 
railway  station,  and  whose  delay  in  returning  led  us  to 
believe  that  he  might  have  been  hindered  by  the  floods, 
which  were  out  that  morning,  I  met  Sir  Henry  out 
walking,  and  told  him  what  I  was  about.  ''  Oh,*'  said 
he,  with  a  twinkle  in  his  eye,  '*  perhaps  he  is  waiting  on 
the  other  side  of  the  brook  till  they  go  down  :  Rusticus 
expectat,  eh.?''  And  he  was  so  pleased  with  himself  for 
this  happy  application  of  Horace  that  he  walked  away 
chuckling,  quite  forgetting  all  about  the  boy.  Another 
time,  when  an  elderly  friend  after  dinner,  bewailing  the 
degeneracy  of  the  age,  exclaimed  rather  theatrically  : 
'  Hei  mihi  I  frcBteritos  refer  at  si  Jupiter  annos*  Sir 
Henry  was  at  once  down  upon  him,  *'  Oh,  don't  say 
that,*'  he  cried  :  "  ^  Canitiem  galea  premimus'  " 

Sir  Henry  was  a  man  of  quick  temper,  and  I  never 
shall  forget  him  one  day  when  I  was  dining  at  Wistow, 
nobody  else  being  present  but  he  and  Lady  Halford, 
and  John  Halford,  then  an  undergraduate  of  Trinity, 
Cambridge,  to  which  seat  of  learning  he  was  about  to 
return  the  next  day.  Sir  Henry  had  given  him  a  cheque 
for  his  quarter's  allowance  that  morning  ;  and  John, 
being  in  want  of  change,  had  sent  the  groom  off  on  horse- 
back to  cash  the  cheque  for  him  at  Leicester,  without 
saying  anything  to  his  father  about  it.  During  dinner 
something  led  to  the  errand  being  mentioned  on  which 
the  groom  had  been  dispatched,  and  as  it  was  then 
getting  late  and  the  man  had  not  returned.  Sir  Henry 
was  very  angry  with  his  son  for  sending  him  to  Leicester 
with  such  a  sum  of  money.  Time  went  on,  and  still  no 
mention  of  the  messenger  ;  and  when  one  of  the  servants 
came  into  the  room,  John  Halford  asked  him  again 
whether  the  man  had  come  back.     ''  No,  sir,"  was  the 


TORY    ARCADIA.  159 

answer.  "  No/'  cried  Sir  Henry,  ''  of  course  not.  You 
don't  expect  him  to  come  back,  do  you  ?  With  sixty 
pounds  in  his  pocket  and  a  good  horse  under  him,  of 
course  he  won't.  He's  a  fool  if  he  does."  This  was  said 
while  the  footmen  were  waiting  in  the  room  to  hear  this 
estimate  of  their  fellow-servant,  who,  it  is  almost  need- 
less to  add,  was  a  perfectly  honest  man  and  returned 
with  the  money  safe  enough  half  an  hour  after  he  had 
been  called  a  fool  if  he  did. 

Sir  Henry,  however,  was  a  good  landlord  and  lenient 
to  poachers,  a  subject  of  frequent  complaint  with  the 
old  gamekeeper,  John  Widdowson,  who  had  watched 
over  the  Wistow  game  with  parental  solicitude  for  more 
than  thirty  years.  Wistow  was  famous  for  its  hares 
in  those  days,  and  when  at  a  coursing  meeting,  to  which 
the  tenants  and  their  friends  were  invited  once  a  year, 
more  than  twenty  hares  were  killed,  it  is  on  record  that 
the  good  old  man  was  moved  to  tears. 

The  next  baronet,  the  famous  rifle-shot  and  my  own 
contemporary  and  playfellow,  was  made  of  different 
metal.  He  was  a  keen  sportsman,  and  managed  to  have 
both  pheasants  and  foxes  at  Wistow.  He  was  a  first- 
rate  rider  to  hounds,  ''  a  Tory  fox-hunter  "  such  as  it 
never  entered  Addison's  head  to  conceive  of.  I  spent 
a  couple  of  days  with  him  at  Wistow  a  few  years  ago, 
and  we  had  a  two  days'  pheasant  shooting  on  my 
native  soil,  every  inch  of  which  I  could  almost  have 
walked  over  blindfolded.  Agricultural  depression  had 
fallen  heavily  on  this  good  old  Tory  family.  Sir  Henry, 
at  the  time  I  refer  to,  had  been  obliged  to  give  up  his 
hunters  and  reduce  his  establishment.  He  had  then  no 
regular  keeper,  but  was  able  to  show  us  some  pheasants 
in  the  small  plantations  round  about  the  Hall  where. 


i6o  TORY    MEMORIES. 

fifty  years  before,  I  used  to  go  bird's-nesting.  When  I 
took  leave  of  him  I  think  he  was  about  to  go  abroad, 
and  I  never  saw  him  again.  He  died  in  January,  1897. 
His  younger  brother,  a  clergyman,  succeeded  to  the 
baronetcy,  but  not  to  the  estates,  which  went  to  the 
present  Lord  Cottesloe,  who  was  one  of  the  shooting 
party  already  mentioned. 

It  is  remarkable  in  what  quick  succession  the  last 
surviving  members  of  the  Halford  family  passed  away. 
Lady  Halford  survived  her  husband  only  a  few  months  ; 
Sir  John  Halford,  who  succeeded  my  father  in  the 
family  living,  which  he  afterwards  exchanged  for  Brix- 
worth  in  Northamptonshire,  died  in  April,  1897;  and 
Mrs.  Pell,  Sir  Henry's  sister,  died  in  1904.  None 
of  the  three  children  left  any  issue,  and  their  places 
know  them  no  more.  My  father,  who  was  vicar  nearly 
sixty  years,  knew  three  generations  of  this  family, 
and  now  both  our  names  are  gradually  fading  away 
from  the  memory  of  the  villagers.  As  I  remember  them, 
when  my  father  was  in  full  health  and  strength,  and 
the  Halfords  were  undepressed  by  the  spectacle  of  unlet 
farms,  they  were  all  very  favourable  specimens,  I  think, 
of  English  rural  life.  They  were  governed  by  Tory  prin- 
ciples, and  seemed  to  flourish  on  them. 

Of  my  father,  I  may  here  say  that  he  was  in- 
tended for  the  law ;  but,  abandoning  that  profession, 
he  went  up  to  Cambridge  very  early  in  the  nineteenth 
century,  and  he  perfectly  well  remembered  Lord 
Palmerston,  who  was  at  Cambridge  at  the  same  time, 
taking  assiduous  notes  at  the  public  lectures.  While 
living  in  the  Temple  before  he  went  to  Cambridge, 
he  heard  Burke  speak  in  the  Warren  Hastings  trial, 
but    could    only    remember    that     he    thought     him 


TORY    ARCADIA.  i6i 

rather  a  common-looking  man.  Of  Sheridan  he 
remembered  nothing  but  his  nose.  He  was  fond  of 
talking  of  those  years,  and  knew  the  name  of  every 
judge  upon  the  Bench  during  the  time  that  he  lived 
in  the  Temple.  He  served  in  a  corps  of  Volunteers, 
though  not  the  Devil's  Own,  and  could  tell  amusing 
stories  of  what  happened  when  they  were  called  out 
to  suppress  a  riot,  the  mob,  I  believe,  having  some 
special  grudge  against  the  cheesemongers,  some  of 
whose  shops  were  looted.  The  Volunteers,  however, 
were  not  very  well  drilled,  and  more  than  one  of 
them  received  bayonet  wounds  from  his  rear-rank 
man.  My  father  was  also  a  great  theatre-goer,  and 
was  fond  of  boasting  of  the  many  nights  running  he 
had  gone  to  see  Mrs.  Siddons.  Many  years  afterwards 
he  found  a  congenial  spirit  in  the  Dean  of  Bangor, 
Dr.  Cotton,  who  on  one  occasion  borrowed  my  father's 
hat  to  go  to  the  theatre,  as  he  did  not  like  to  go  there 
in  his  own.  My  father  was  staying  at  a  friend's  house, 
where  the  Dean  happened  to  be  dining,  and  as  he  didn't 
want  to  go  to  the  theatre  himself,  he  could  spare  his 
hat.  I,  too,  remember  this  old  Dean  of  Bangor  very 
well,  a  most  cheerful  and  humorous  old  gentleman 
and  a  good  scholar.  I  recollect  his  desiring  me,  when 
a  schoolboy,  to  replenish  the  fire  in  the  words 
of  Horace. 

When  my  father  went  into  the  Church,  he  held  a 
curacy  under  Dr.  Rhudd,  of  East  Bergholt  in  Suffolk. 
Dr.  Rhudd  was  a  Tory  of  the  Tories,  and  in  his  society 
my  father's  political  principles,  already  founded  on  a 
warm  appreciation  of  Mr.  Pitt,  received  their  finishing 
touch.  The  Doctor's  High  Churchmanship  took  the 
form  of  intense  dislike  for  Calvinism,  and  his  curate 

L 


i62  TORY    MEMORIES. 

imbibed  the  same  horror  of  that  austere  creed.  Except 
this  article  of  faith,  I  think,  he  bequeathed  him  nothing 
except  his  walking-stick,  which  is  now  in  my  possession, 
black  with  age.  The  last  time  I  was  in  the  neighbour- 
hood I  paid  a  visit  to  Bergholt,  and  inspected  the 
parish  register  in  the  church.  There  I  found  my 
father's  signature  for  the  years  1809-1811,  I  think,  in 
the  well-known  hand  which  never  varied  till  he  was 
turned  eighty,  when  his  eyesight  began  to  fail  him. 

He  once  told  me  that  when  he  first  came  into 
Leicestershire  there  was  only  service  at  the  parish 
church  of  Kilby,  before  Newton  Chapel  was  built.  The 
Wistow  servants  would  sometimes  go  to  church  at 
Kibworth,  a  village  about  three  miles  off.  To  get  there 
they  had  to  cross  a  tiny  little  stream  which  ran  across 
the  road,  and  could  generally  be  easily  stepped  across. 
After  a  heavy  rain,  however,  it  would  sometimes  become 
quite  a  little  brook,  and  the  housemaids  from  the  Hall 
thought  nothing  of  taking  off  their  shoes  and  stockings 
and  wading  through  it  bare-legged — a  relic  of  ancient 
simplicity  dear,  of  course,  to  the  Tory  mind. 

One  of  my  early  recollections  is  of  being  taken  to 
a  hunt  breakfast,  which  I  regard  to  some  extent  as  a 
Tory,  or  at  least  a  Conservative  institution.  But  Lam 
sorry  to  say  I  was  dreadfully  bored  by  it.  I  was  then 
only  about  eleven  years  old,  and  my  father  would  not 
hear  of  my  being  put  on  the  back  of  a  hunter,  so  I  rode 
in  the  carriage  with  the  ladies.  After  the  breakfast, 
where  I  knew  nobody,  we  drove  about  from  point  to 
point  to  see  what  could  be  seen  of  the  hounds,  and 
every  now  and  then  came  upon  them  crossing  a  road 
and  the  men  jumping  their  horses  in  and  out  of  it,  believ- 
ing themselves  to  be  bewitching  the  ladies  with  noble 


TORY   ARCADIA.  163 

horsemanship.  I  remember  one  gentleman  well  on  ac- 
count of  the  melancholy  end  which  overtook  him.  He 
rode  up  alongside  of  the  carriage  and  talked  to  its  occu- 
pants for  a  few  minutes,  and  then,  saying  that  he  was 
going  to  show  off,  put  his  horse  at  the  adjoining  fence. 
He  was  a  captain  in  some  cavalry  regiment,  which 
he  afterwards  commanded,  and  was  so  cut  to  the 
heart  by  their  behaviour  in  one  of  the  great  Indian 
battles  that  he  put  an  end  to  his  life. 

''  I  have  known  men,'*  says  Thackeray,  *' who  took  a 
horrid  delight  in  making  boys  drunk.'*  I  never  encoun- 
tered a  monster  of  this  kind  myself,  but  I  do  remember 
when  boys  were  rather  encouraged  to  drink  wine,  and 
taught  to  consider  it  a  manly  thing  to  be  able  to  bear  a 
good  deal.  I  was  not  brought  up  in  this  way.  My  father 
was  a  remarkably  abstemious  man,  and  very  little  wine 
was  drunk  at  our  table  when  I  was  a  boy.  But  there 
is  an  association  of  ideas  between  port  wine  and  Tory 
politics  which  I  have  no  wish  to  dispel,  and,  as  an  illus- 
tration of  it,  I  remember  my  godmother,  a  most  un- 
impeachable Tory  female,  stirring  up  my  youthful  ambi- 
tion by  telling  me  she  knew  of  a  boy  not  older  than  myself 
who  could  drink  his  six  glasses  of  ''  port  wine  and  be  as 
steady  as  a  jug  after  it.'*  These  were  her  very  words. 
She  said  '*  jug,''  mind,  not  *'  judge."  Having  thus 
briefly  intimated  to  me  in  which  direction  the  path 
of  honour  lay,  she  dropped  the  subject  and  left  her 
words,  and  the  look  of  scorn  with  which  they  were 
accompanied,  to  fructify  in  my  bosom.  The  seed  was 
sown  in  a  not  unkindly  soil,  and  though  choked  for  a 
time  by  sponge  cakes,  figs,  and  raisins,  it  eventually 
came  up,  and  I  still  continue  to  prefer  port  to  any  other 
wine  that  can  be  offered  to  me. 


i64  TORY    MEMORIES. 

Among  other  Tory  gentry  who  adorned  what  I  have 
fondly  called  Tory  Arcadia,  I  remember  Sir  Arthur 
Hazelrigge,  the  descendant  of  an  old  family  attached 
to  the  Parliamentary  party,  as  the  Halfords  were  to  the 
Royalists.  In  fact,  his  ancestor  was  the  well-known 
general  of  that  name,  who  commanded  a  regiment  of 
cavalry  under  Cromwell.  But  "  he  bore  no  traces  of 
the  sable  strain.'*  He  was  an  ideal  country  gentleman 
and  landlord,  a  sound  Churchman,  and  a  good  Tory, 
beloved  and  revered  by  all  his  numerous  tenantry.  But 
he,  too,  had  suffered  from  the  depreciation  of  agricul- 
ture, which,  indeed,  has  had  a  far-reaching  effect,  not, 
perhaps,  anticipated  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago.  It  is 
not  only  in  pocket  that  the  country  gentlemen  have 
suffered.  The  lean  years  which  reduced  their  incomes 
inevitably  diminished  their  influence.  Wealth  and 
power  and  privilege  may  not  be  the  highest  deities  to 
which  the  human  mind  can  do  homage,  but  they  always 
have  commanded  it  since  the  world  began,  and  probably 
always  will.  With  the  loss  of  half  his  rentals,  the 
country  gentleman's  hospitalities,  charities,  and  general 
amenities  were  necessarily  curtailed.  With  half  his 
farms  unoccupied,  he  lost  a  number  of  adherents,  through 
whom  his  influence  permeated  the  whole  body  of  agri- 
cultural peasantry.  He  could  no  longer  make  the  same 
figure  in  the  county  ;  he  was  no  longer  among  the  best 
customers  of  the  tradesmen  in  his  county  town.  With 
the  passage  of  the  County  Government  Bill  of  1888  he 
was  shorn  of  much  of  that  jurisdiction  which  he  exer- 
cised so  beneficially,  and  which,  of  course,  added  to  his 
importance.  His  position  was  no  longer  one  to  exer- 
cise that  unconscious  influence  on  the  imagination  of 
the  rural  population  which   the  presence  of  a  resident 


TORY    ARCADIA.  165 

aristocracy,  with  all  its  hereditary  prerogatives,  its 
antiquity,  and  its  splendour  is  calculated  to  exert. 

In  a  word,  in  too  many  English  counties  the  spell 
was  broken,  and  it  is  my  firm  conviction  that  it  is  this 
more  than  anything  else  which  has  caused  so  many 
English  counties  to  exchange  their  old  Tory  representa- 
tives for  Liberals.  If  it  is  said  that  the  change  is  due 
simply  to  the  fact  that  the  country  gentlemen  can  no 
longer  practise  any  kind  of  compulsion,  moral  or  material, 
on  the  newly-enfranchised  voters,  I  stoutly  deny  it. 
This,  of  course,  has  had  its  share  in  producing  the  result, 
but  only  a  small  share.  Had  the  landed  proprietors 
in  1885  been  what  they  were  twenty  years  earlier,  had 
there  been  no  agricultural  depression  and  no  material 
change  in  the  social  and  political  position  of  the 
gentry,  had  the  Hall  and  the  Manor  House  still  been 
kept  up  as  of  old,  I  don't  believe  that  the  enfranchise- 
ment of  the  peasantry,  or  anything  which  contributed  to 
give  them  greater  independence,  would  have  severed  the 
tie  which  had  so  long  bound  together  the  owners  and 
cultivators  of  the  soil  in  bonds  of  mutual  goodwill,  loy- 
alty, and  respect.  But  events  have  been  otherwise  shaped, 
the  old  proprietors  have  lost  their  hold  over  both  tenants 
and  labourers,  and  Tory  Arcadia  as  it  really  once  existed, 
though  opinions  may  differ  as  to  the  exact  date  when  it 
began  to  disappear,  is,  I  fear,  a  dream  of  the  past. 

Mr.  Froude  anticipates  the  time  when  England  may 
have  lost  her  Empire  and  her  commerce,  and  have 
become  a  nation  of  shepherds  and  herdsmen.  Should 
that  time  ever  come,  Arcadia  may  in  one  sense  return. 
But  not  as  Lord  Beaconsfield  so  eloquently  said  in  1864, 
not  *'the  old  England.*'  The  word  ''Arcadia"  is  not 
to   be    taken   too    seriously.     I   have    not    used    it   in 


i66  TORY    MEMORIES. 

the  present  chapter  to  denote  a  kind  of  golden  age, 
such  as  is  said  to  have  existed  in  the  rural  districts 
in  the  reign  of  Anne  ;  but  rather  as  a  short  way  of 
describing  a  time  when  between  the  different  classes 
of  the  rural  population  there  was  no  serious  antagon- 
ism— when  the  peasantry  were  contented  with  village 
life,  and  farmer  and  labourer  alike  regarded  their 
landlords,  if  sometimes  with  hostility,  never  with 
jealousy,  or  with  any  idea  of  ever  stepping  into  their 
places.  But  perhaps  the  change,  after  all,  has  not  been 
so  great,  and  may  not  be  so  permanent,  as  is  here  sug- 
gested. And,  indeed,  I  believe  there  are  some  English 
counties  in  which  the  old  ties  which  once  united  all 
classes  of  the  rural  population  are  still  unbroken. 

The  picture,  however,  would  not  be  complete  without 
a  word  or  two  of  the  Rector  and  Vicar  who  inhabited  this 
pleasant  land.  I  can  confirm  from  my  own  memory 
what  Mr.  Froude  has  said  of  an  earlier  generation  of 
country  clergymen.  What  they  were  in  the  reign  of 
George  IV.,  that  they  continued  to  be  in  the  reign  of 
WilUam,  and  down  to  a  late  period  in  the  reign  of  his 
successor.  These  clergymen  were  Tories  to  a  man,  all 
belonging  more  or  less  to  the  high  and  dry  school,  slightly 
moistened  in  some  instances,  either  by  an  infusion  of 
Waverley  romance,  or  by  some  percolating  element  of 
the  earlier  Oxford  revival,  which  was  beginning  slowly 
to  make  itself  felt  among  the  parochial  clergy  in  general. 
I  don't  mean  to  say  that  what  I  remember  to  have  heard 
and  seen  among  the  clergy  in  question  was  said  and 
done  exclusively  because  they  were  Tories.  Had  there 
been  any  Whig  clergymen  in  those  parts,  they  would 
probably  have  talked  and  acted,  mutatis  mutandis,  in 
the  same  manner.     But  there  were  none. 


TORY    ARCADIA.  167 

Among  others  whom  I  remember  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood, the  Rev.  Richard  Pelham  stands  out  most 
prominently.  He  was  rector  of  an  adjoining  village, 
a  living  worth  six  or  seven  hundred  a  year,  the 
younger  son  of  a  good  family,  and  a  man  of  some  taste 
and  culture.  He  had  been  Captain  of  Westminster, 
and  proceeded  in  due  course  to  Christchurch,  and  when 
I  first  remember  him,  he  had  been  resident  in  the  county 
about  ten  years,  and  was  perhaps  fifty  years  of  age. 
He  was  one  of  those  High  Churchmen  in  whom  the 
coming  dawn  of  Anglicanism  was  just  becoming  visible. 
He  was,  as  I  have  said,  a  well-read  man,  and  I  can  see 
him  now  sitting  after  dinner  and  sipping  his  port,  twid- 
dling the  nutcrackers  between  his  finger  and  thumb,  as 
he  pronounced  ex  cathedra  that  the  Oxford  men  were 
''  quite  right.''  Not,  indeed,  that  he  was  going  to  live 
up  to  them.  He  had  been  used  to  the  old  ways  too 
long  for  that.  But  he  recognised  that  they  had  his- 
torical truth  on  their  side,  and  left  it  to  others  to  prac- 
tise what  they  taught.  It  was  the  social  side  of  his 
character  that  was  best  known.  He  was  a  good  fisher- 
man, and  sometimes  went  out  with  his  gun,  though  a 
bad  shot.  He  was  a  great  diner-out  and  raconteur^ 
and  was  a  welcome  guest  at  the  best  houses  in  the 
county.  In  those  days  a  broad  jest  was  more  frequent 
than  it  is  now,  though  suggestive  conversation  was 
much  less  so.  When  Mr.  Pelham  asked  a  young  lady 
across  the  dinner  table,  as  I  heard  him  at  a  large  party, 
whether  she  gartered  above  or  below  the  knee,  the 
question  was  thought  to  be  in  perfectly  good  taste, 
and  created  much  merriment.  He  was  widely  and 
deservedly  popular. 

The  parson  of  this  class  stood,  as  Mr.  Froude  very 


170  TORY    MEMORIES. 

A  good  deal  of  simple-minded  old-fashioned  Toryism 
and  churchmanship  still  lingers  in  Arcadia,  even  among 
the  rising  generation.  Not  long  ago  I  was  much  amused 
by  a  conversation  which  I  overheard  at  a  well-known 
Tory  club,  where  two  quite  young  men  were  dining  at 
a  table  adjoining  mine.  One  of  them  had  just  come 
up  to  town,  and  his  companion  was  inquiring  about 
their  mutual  friends  in  the  country.  How  was  Brown  ? 
How  was  Jones  ?  How  was  Robinson  ?  These  ques- 
tions being  answered,  the  querist  bethought  him  of  a 
fourth  acquaintance.  ''  Ah !  ''  he  said,  ''  and  how*s 
old  Thompson  ?  '*  ''  Well,''  says  the  other,  ''  we  don't 
know  quite  what  to  make  of  him.  He's  given  up  hunt- 
ing, and  doesn't  go  to  church,  and  all  that  sort  of  thing." 
The  humour  of  this  I  thought  something  exquisite. 


CHAPTER   XIII. 

TORY   BOHEMIA. 

Journalism  in  the  Mid-Century — War  between  Tory  and  Liberal  Journal- 
ists— James  Hannay  and  G.  A.  Sala — The  Idler — The  Retort  upon 
"  S.  and  B."— The  Company  at  the  "  Cock  "  and  the  "  Cheese  " 
— Edgar  and  his  Love  of  Genealogy — Evans's — The  Last  Stage  in 
Hannay's  Career — Mortimer  Collins — His  Eccentricities — His  Love 
of  Nature — Charming  a  Thrush — Edward  Whitty — A  Bohemian 
who  was  found  Reading  the  Commination  Service — Antinomies 
of  Character — Johnny  Baker. 

It  is  a  wide  leap  from  the  green  fields  and  quiet  villages 
of  rural  England  to  the  murky  atmosphere,  incessant 
din,  and  intellectual  activity  of  Fleet  Street  and  the 
Strand.  I  have  explained  in  the  first  chapter  how  I 
came  to  enter  upon  the  career  of  journalism.  I  may 
now  give  some  account  of  the  companions  to  whom  it 
introduced  me. 

When  I  first  settled  down  in  London  and  began  to 
write  regularly,  there  were  two  elements  just  begin- 
ning to  mingle  in  the  journalistic  world.  Journalism 
had  not  yet  come  to  be  regarded  as  exactly  the  career 
for  a  gentleman.  At  aU  events,  it  was  not  one  to  which 
in  my  time  members  of  either  Oxford  or  Cambridge 
University  looked  forward,  as  they  looked  forward  to 
what  were  then  known  as  ''  the  liberal  professions." 
But  with  the  beginning  of  the  second  half  of  the  last 
century  a  change  began  gradually  to  show  itself.  There 
had  always  been  a  certain  number  of  highly  educated 
gentlemen  in  the  higher  departments   of  the  London 

171 


172  TORY    MEMORIES. 

Press,  but  they  might  have  been  counted  on  one's 
fingers.  Between  1850  and  i860  they  had  rapidly  in- 
creased, and  a  shght  feehng  of  jealousy  had  sprung  up 
between  the  old  rank-and-file  of  journalism  and  the 
newcomers  from  the  Universities,  who  were  supposed 
to  give  themselves  airs,  as  well  as  to  be  gradually  usurp- 
ing the  places  so  long  held  by  a  class  of  men  differently 
brought  up,  and  bred  to  the  business  from  their  boy- 
hood. When  once  I  began  in  earnest  as  a  working 
journalist,  I  soon  became  aware  of  this  fact. 

At  this  time  the  two  leading  men  in  Bohemia,  as  far 
as  I  knew  it,  were  James  Hannay  and  George  Augustus 
Sala.  When  I  was  first  introduced  to  Hannay  he  was 
supposed  to  be  a  Liberal,  and  I  think  would  have  called 
himself  so.  He  was  actually  regarded  as  such  by  all 
his  brother  Bohemians,  and  many  other  journalists 
and  writers  who  were  not  of  that  fraternity — Mr.  Hep- 
worth  Dixon,  Mr.  Peter  Cunningham,  and  some  others 
less  known.  By  degrees,  however,  as  Mr.  Hannay  be- 
came acquainted  with  two  or  three  Oxford  men — Mr. 
Sotheby  for  one,  a  first-class  man,  and  Fellow  of 
Exeter  ;  William  Brandt,  of  Oriel ;  Edward  Wilber- 
force  ;  J.  G.  Edgar,  not  a  University  man,  but  a  very 
clever  and  original  creature,  and  a  red-hot  feudahst — 
he  gradually  began  to  withdraw  himself  from  his  old 
associates,  and  ere  long  came  out  as  a  decided  Tory  and 
the  leader  of  a  Tory  party  in  the  kingdom  of  Bohemia. 
This  change  was  furiously  resented  by  those  whom  he 
had  left,  who  called  him  a  turncoat,  and  a  hypocrite, 
one  who  only  professed  Toryism  to  curry  favour  with 
his  fine  new  friends.  Sala  told  him  he  was  only  veneered. 
The  two  parties  set  up  two  rival  magazines  wherewith 
to   combat   each   other.    The   Tory   periodical,   owned 


TORY    BOHEMIA.  173 

and  edited  by  Mr.  Edward  Wilberforce,  was  called  the 
Idler,  The  Liberal  or  Radical  rival  was  published  by 
Messrs.  Groombridge,  and  at  this  moment  I  forget  its 
name.  Of  course,  Sala  and  Robert  Brough  were  among 
its  leading  contributors.  In  a  dialogue  they  introduced 
the  Idler,  *' What  is  the  Idler?''  says  one.  '^  Oh, 
University  and  water,"  was  the  answer.  This  provoked 
a  retort  from  the  Idler,  not  perhaps  in  the  best  taste,  but 
which  succeeded  in  its  main  object  of  stinging  the  twin 
assailants  to  the  quick.  It  was  founded  on  the  sup- 
posed ignorance  of  general  literature,  and  classical  litera- 
ture in  particular,  unjustly  attributed  to  the  two  gentle- 
men who  are  indicated  by  their  initials,  neither  of  whom 
at  that  time  was  very  particular  about  his  personal 
appearance. 

Easy  to  see  why  S.  and  B. 

Should  hate  the  University; 

Easy  to  see  why  B.  and  S. 

Should  hate  cold  water  little  less : 

While  by  their  works  they  shew  their  creed 

That  men  who  write  should  never  read, 

Their  faces  show  they  think  it  bosh 

That  men  who  write  should  ever  wash. 

Sala  threatened  with  a  fearful  fate  "  the  hound  "  who 
had  written  this  if  he  could  only  find  him. 

The  war  thus  begun  was  carried  on  with  consider- 
able acrimony.  Sometimes  the  two  parties  met  at  the 
same  tavern,  when  very  high  words  ensued,  and  some- 
times efforts  were  made  at  conciliation,  which,  if  well 
meant,  were  not  always  judicious.  I  never  shall  forget 
seeing  Sotheby,  grandson  of  the  poet,  then  an  Oxford 
Don  and  the  pink  of  neatness  and  propriety,  walking 
up  and  down  the  room  with  Sala,  and  trying  to  persuade 


174  TORY   MEMORIES. 

that  formidable  humorist  that  University  men  did  not 
despise  him.  Those  who  knew  Sala  will  easily  imagine 
the  countenance  with  which  he  received  this  assurance. 
Sotheby's  studious  politeness  and  perseverance  only 
enraged  him  all  the  more  as  smacking  of  condescension. 

James  Hannay  was  not  a  man  to  be  easily  forgotten. 
He  never  did  himself  justice.  He  was  endowed  by  nature 
with  a  brilliant  wit.  He  had  stored  his  mind  with  the 
best  literature,  English  and  French,  Greek  and  Latin. 
He  wrote  a  charming  style,  easy  without  being  slovenly, 
racy  without  being  coarse,  and  never  falling  below  a 
high  standard  of  English  composition.  He  had  been  in 
the  Royal  Navy,  and  was  a  midshipman  on  board 
a  man-of-war  when  in  1840  the  decks  were  cleared  for 
action  in  expectation  of  an  immediate  collision  with  the 
French  Fleet  in  the  Mediterranean.  He  had  received 
no  regular  education,  nor  had  he  acquired  the  habit  of 
application.  But  he  was  a  man  of  frugal  tastes,  and 
when  he  threw  himself  on  the  Press  for  a  livelihood,  he 
soon  found  no  difficulty  in  providing  for  his  simple 
wants.  It  was  soon  after  leaving  Oxford  that  I  first 
made  his  acquaintance.  Not  long  afterwards  he  mar- 
ried, and  settled  down  in  a  house  at  Islington,  where 
for  the  next  seven  or  eight  years  he  entertained  his 
friends  in  a  simple  style  after  the  manner  of  Charles 
Lamb.  But  Hannay  never  really  worked  hard.  He 
was  satisfied  if  he  made  an  income  sufficient  for 
the  passing  day.  In  his  admirable  wife  he  had  an 
excellent  housekeeper,  who  kept  everything  straight, 
and  saved  her  husband  from  all  pecuniary  worries.  I 
think  those  were  some  of  the  happiest  days  of  Hannay's 
Ufe. 

When  I  came  to  live  permanently  in  London,  I  began 


TORY    BOHEMIA.  175 

to  see  a  great  deal  of  him.  We  used  to  meet  in  the 
Reading  Room  of  the  British  Museum,  and  go  out  to 
lunch  together  in  a  very  economical  style  at  a  neigh- 
bouring public  house — for  it  was  little  better — called  the 
''  Pied  Bull/'  which  has  now,  alas  !  been  dead  for  many 
years.  I  remember  a  dinner  at  Blackwall,  when  Shirley 
Brooks  was  of  the  party.  He  and  Hannay  had,  of 
course,  a  good  deal  of  literary  conversation,  and  after 
dinner  a  stranger,  who  had  been  sitting  at  an  adjoining 
table,  came  over  to  Hannay *s,  uninvited,  saying  :  *'  I 
perceived,  gentlemen,  from  your  conversation,  that  you 
were  in  the  literary  line,  so  I  took  the  liberty  of  joining 
you,  as  I  am,  I  assure  you,  lineally  descended  from 
Addison.'*  Hannay  always  described  the  intruder  as 
a  bagman,  and,  indeed,  his  mode  of  address  savoured 
strongly  of  that  profession.  His  reply  was  as  follows 
''  Addison,  sir,  left  only  one  child,  a  daughter,  who  was 
imbecile,  a  fact,  I  must  allow,  which  does  lend  some 
colour  to  your  pretensions  ;  but  as  she  died  without 
issue,  I  can  only  regard  them  as  an  idiotic  fiction.'' 

Hannay  was  imbued  with  the  sentiment  and  the 
romance  of  Jacobitism,  and  was  very  sensible  of  the 
points  which  it  offered  for  Hterary  treatment.  But 
he  went  no  further.  With  his  love  of  the  old  feudal 
fighting  days,  and  his  appreciation  of  the  grape  com- 
bined, it  was  natural  for  him  to  say  of  the  **  white 
rose  "  that  it  was  ''  a  flower  which  had  always  required 
a  great  deal  of  moisture,  whether  wine  or  blood."  At 
the  General  Election  of  1857  he  offered  himself  as  a 
Tory  candidate  for  Dumfries  against  Mr.  Ewart,  the 
sitting  member,  an  old  Whig.  Of  course,  he  had  no 
chance  in  those  days  against  such  an  opponent ;  but  it 
is  a  curious  thing  that  he  had  the  show  of  hands  on  his 


176  TORY    MEMORIES. 

side,  and  I  remember  its  being  noted  in  a  Liberal  London 
newspaper  how  he  had  talked  over  a  Scots  mob  to 
Toryism.  So  he  had :  for  he  was  a  brilliant  speaker,  and 
he  made  the  most  of  his  knowledge  of  Scottish  character 
and  Scottish  traditions.  He  used  to  say  that  in  Scot- 
land you  found  among  the  people  a  curious  mixture 
of  feudalism  and  Radicalism.  Hannay  knew  how  to 
appeal  to  both.  The  middle  class  constituencies  of 
those  days  cared  for  neither.  Such  talk  was  foolishness 
to  them.  But  the  people,  the  working  men,  in  Scotland 
understood  what  he  meant,  and  a  considerable  number 
of  old  Scottish  Tories,  who  were  still  to  be  found  in 
sheltered  situations,  gave  him  their  support. 

0  nodes  ccencequce  Deum  !  when  Hannay  and  Edgar, 
whom  I  have  already  mentioned,  and  a  few  other 
choice  Bohemians  to  be  mentioned  hereafter,  for- 
gathered at  the  ''  Cock  '' — the  old  *'  Cock,''  I  mean  : 
Tennyson's  "  Cock  " — or  the  ''  Cheshire  Cheese,"  or  the 
old  *'  Edinburgh  Castle,"  then  a  great  haunt  of  the 
Bohemian  brotherhood,  and  talked  Toryism,  and  pedi- 
grees, and  literature,  and  scholarship  till  the  clock 
struck  twelve  and  Sunday  had  begun,  for  these  sym- 
posia were  mostly  on  ''  Saturday  at  e'en."  Hannay,  as 
a  rule,  dined  at  home.  But  some  of  the  other  men 
dined  at  one  or  other  of  these  taverns  regularly  ;  for 
Clubs  then  were  much  less  known  than  they  are  now, 
and  a  great  number  of  gentlemen  who  now  go  west- 
ward for  their  evening  meal  would  then  have  sought  for 
it  in  Fleet  Street.  Edgar  was  a  typical  Bohemian,  and 
always  dined  at  such  places  when  he  dined  at  all,  which 
he  did  not  do  every  day  in  the  week.  This  was  not  for 
want  of  means,  but  because  he  did  his  literary  work 
best  by  long  spells  at  a  time,  during  which  he  only 


TORY    BOHEMIA.  177 

stirred  from  his  lodgings  to  go  to  the  Museum,  and 
drank  nothing  but  coffee.  In  this  last  respect,  perhaps, 
he  was  wanting  in  one  attribute  of  Bohemia.  But  he 
made  amends  for  his  self-imposed  abstinence  when  he 
broke  out,  and  when  he  had  no  work  in  hand  he  was  to 
be  found  at  the  "  Cheese  **  every  night  of  his  life. 

His  favourite  study  was  genealogy — the  history  of 
the  great  feudal  families  of  Great  Britain,  and  of  such 
of  their  descendants  as  could  honestly  claim  kin  with 
them,  and  were  entitled  to  be  held  of  what  he  and 
Hannay  used  to  call  "  the  regular  tap.'*  If  any  man 
of  name  unknown  to  fame  distinguished  himself  in  arts 
or  arms,  they  made  desperate  efforts  to  bring  him  within 
the  charmed  circle,  sometimes  by  the  dexterous  trans- 
formation of  a  single  letter,  sometimes  by  making  a  wide 
cast  and  picking  up  the  scent  of  him  three  centuries 
back.  This  to  Edgar  was  a  labour  of  love.  He  scorned 
to  turn  the  vast  amount  of  knowledge  which  he  acquired 
in  this  way  to  any  useful  end,  beyond  the  help  it  afforded 
him  in  writing  books  for  boys,  in  which  he  was  very 
skilful.  He  used  this  valuable  stock  of  information, 
as  was  truly  said  of  him,  as  the  man-at-arms  in  the 
Middle  Ages  used  the  gold  chain  which  he  had  acquired 
in  the  wars,  breaking  off  a  link  or  two  of  it  now  and 
then  to  supply  his  immediate  necessities — but  no  more. 
It  was  curious,  according  to  the  life  he  led,  that  he 
should  have  subsisted  chiefly  by  writing  children's 
books  ;  but  so  it  was,  though  he  had  some  newspaper 
employment  subsidiary  to  it  which  made  his  income 
equal  to  his  wants.  He  possessed  some  virtues  not 
common  in  Bohemia.  He  was  never  in  debt.  When 
he  got  fifty  pounds  for  a  book  he  handed  over  thirty 
pounds  of  it  to  his  landlady  and  kept  the  remainder  for 

M 


178  TORY   MEMORIES. 

himself,  of  which  a  large  part,  no  doubt,  went  into 
the  pockets  of  Mr.  Dolamore,  the  genial  proprietor  of 
the  ''  Cheshire/'  ''  I  think  old  Edgar,"  said  Hannay 
one  day,  "  is  the  happiest  man  I  know.  He  gets  up  in 
the  morning  and  saunters  down  to  the  'Mus/*'  (as  the 
Museum  was  fondly  called  in  those  days  by  its  Bohemian 
frequenters),  ''  and  busies  himself  in  Dugdale  or  Collins 
till  four  or  five.  Then  he  goes  down  to  his  newspaper 
office,  and  potters  over  a  pedigree  or  an  obituary  notice, 
and  writes  a  paragraph.  Then  he  goes  on  to  the 
'  Cheshire  Cheese '  and  has  his  steak  and  his  six 
tumblers,  which  just  carry  him  through  all  his  favourite 
ideas.'' 

Hannay  was  of  a  more  practical  turn  than  Edgar. 
He  looked  up  to  Lord  Derby,  and  was  proud  of  having 
for  his  political  chief  one  of  such  *'  irreproachable 
lineage,"  as  the  Baron  of  Bradwardine  calls  it.  He 
admired  Lord  Palmerston,  too,  whom  Edgar  did  not 
scruple  to  describe  as  a  *'  flash  Irishman." 

Neither  of  these  two  men,  be  it  remembered,  nor 
any  of  their  usual  companions,  ever  dreamed  of  show- 
ing themselves  in  Society,  or  of  seeking  admittance  to 
those  fashionable  assemblies  to  which  others  in  every 
way  their  inferiors  were  readily  welcomed.  They  were 
the  true  descendants  of  the  Boyces  and  the  Savages — 
the  wild  asses,  as  Macaulay  calls  them,  who  were 
untameable  and  seemingly  incorrigible.  There  were 
degrees,  however,  amongst  them.  Dr.  Johnson  emerged 
from  Bohemia,  took  Beauclerk's  advice  to  purge  and 
live  cleanly  "  like  a  gentleman,"  and  was  no  unwelcome 
figure  in  a  lady's  drawing-room.  Hannay,  though  a 
thorough  Bohemian  at  heart,  was  prevented  by  his  wife 
from  giving  himself  up  entirely  to  its  wild  tavern  Ufe, 


TORY    BOHEMIA.  179 

and  when  he  went  to  Edinburgh  as  Editor  of  the 
Evening  Courant,  was  wiUing  to  lead  a  Hfe  of  con- 
ventional respectability.  But  he  never  lost  the 
Bohemian  ethos;  for  after  his  marriage,  I  remember 
hearing  him  say,  a  propos  of  Christmas  dinner  parties, 
for  which  he  had  great  contempt,  that  ''  a  lot  of  fellows 
ought  to  get  together  over  a  piece  of  beef  and  a  bowl 
of  punch."  He  had  no  idea  of  real  domesticity ;  and 
he  was  most  fortunate  in  his  wife,  who  thoroughly  under- 
stood him,  and  never  interfered  with  propensities  which, 
however  inconvenient  she  may  at  times  have  found 
them,  were  innocent  in  themselves. 

When  I  paid  him  a  visit  at  Edinburgh  I  found  him 
and  his  family  all  very  happy.  I  was  introduced  to 
Alexander  Smith,  and  we  had  a  tavern  dinner  with 
cock-a-leekie  and  haggis  at  some  house  of  repute,  the 
''  Cock  ''  or  the  ''  Cheshire  Cheese  ''  of  Edinburgh.  It 
was  a  very  jovial  evening,  quite  in  the  Bohemian  style, 
and  was  only  marred,  if  at  all,  by  Hannay's  excessive 
love  of  making  speeches,  and  of  insisting  on  other  men 
making  them,  whether  they  had  any  faculty  for  it  or  not. 
I  have  suffered  dreadfully  in  my  time  from  this  pro- 
pensity at  the  hands  of  other  men  as  well  as  Hannay. 
It  was  as  bad  as  the  horrid  old  custom  of  compelling 
a  man  to  sing  after  dinner  or  supper,  on  pain  of  having 
to  swallow  a  tumbler  of  salt-and-water.  I  know  I  had 
to  propose  the  health  of  Alexander  Smith,  and  I  be- 
lieve that  in  sheer  desperation  I  compared  him  to 
Shakespeare,  Pope  and  Tennyson  lumped  into  one.  One 
day  we  rode  out  to  Roslin  and  threaded  Hawthorn- 
den.  Of  course  we  ascended  *' the  High  Castle  rock," 
associated  for  ever  with  ''  Bonny  Dundee,"  a  favourite 
song  of  Hannay's,  which  he  would  recite  as  often  as 


l8o  TORY   MEMORIES. 

an  opportunity  occurred ;  and  I  remember  on  one 
occasion,  when  we  and  a  party  of  Bohemians  were 
having  supper  at  Evanses,  we  all  struck  up  ''  Bonny 
Dundee  ''  at  the  top  of  our  voices,  to  the  great  amuse- 
ment of  the  company,  who  took  it  very  good-naturedly, 
though  I  daresay  the  effect  of  it  was  very  ludicrous,  as 
everyone  sang  it  to  the  tune  he  knew  best. 

Speaking  of  Evans's  reminds  me  that  this,  too, 
was  a  great  haunt  of  Bohemians  and  of  those  who 
passed  to  and  fro  between  Bohemian  and  conventional 
society,  and  were  equally  at  home  in  both.  Among 
such  men  I  remember  Frank  Talfourd,  William  Hale, 
Andy  O'Brien  (surnamed,  when  he  was  at  Eton,  Phubs,  a 
name  which  somehow  or  other  seemed  to  fit  him  remark- 
ably well).  I  had  known  Talfourd  at  Oxford,  and  when 
we  met  again  in  London  we  became  for  a  time  pretty 
intimate.  To  Evans's  often  came  Serjeant  Ballantine, 
Buckstone,  and  Albert  Smith.  Talfourd,  of  course, 
who  was  then  well  known  as  a  burlesque  writer,  intro- 
duced me  to  those  three  stars,  and  I  considered  it  a  high 
privilege  to  sit  at  the  same  table  with  any  one  of  them. 
Buckstone,  however,  was  so  deaf  that  it  was  no  use 
trying  to  talk  to  him  ;  but  it  was  enough  to  hear  him 
speak.  His  voice  was  sufficient.  Talfourd,  I  remember, 
invited  myself  and  some  other  Oxford  friends  to  a  Fancy 
Dress  Ball  at  Lady  Talfourd's.  We  went — I,  at  least  in 
plain  clothes  ;  and  actors  and  actresses  who  came  in 
late  from  the  theatres  did  the  same.  I  found  the  party 
rather  dull,  as  I  knew  nobody,  was  no  dancer,  and  had 
no  costume  to  strut  about  in.  So  I  left  early  and 
betook  myself  to  the  ''  Cock,"  where,  in  company  with  a 
congenial  friend,  who  happened  to  be  there,  we  enjoyed, 
till  past  midnight,  the  oysters  and  porter  which  were 


TORY    BOHEMIA.  i8i 

served  at  that  tavern  in  the  good  old  days  up  to  two 
o'clock  in  the  morning. 

When  Hannay  left  the  Courant — partly,  I  think, 
owing  to  some  dispute  with  the  proprietors,  who  dis- 
liked the  freedom  with  which  he  wrote  of  some  of  the 
party  leaders — he  was  entertained  at  a  grand  banquet, 
Wordsworth,  Bishop  of  St.  Andrews,  taking  the  chair, 
and  Professor  Hill  Burton  (though  himself  a  Whig) 
the  vice-chair.  On  that  occasion  Hannay  asserted  what 
he  thought  ought  to  be  the  position  of  a  party  journalist, 
and  his  relations  with  the  party  leaders.  *'  I  am/*  he 
said,  ''  their  soldier,  but  not  their  servant.  I  wear 
their  uniform,  but  not  their  plush."  This  distinction, 
loudly  applauded  by  the  audience,  has  always  struck 
me  as  a  very  happy  one  ;  and  it  is  one,  I  believe,  that 
the  leaders  of  the  Tory  party,  at  headquarters  at  least, 
have  always  recognised. 

The  mention  of  this  dinner  calls  to  my  mind  another 
which  was  given  to  Mr.  Hannay  by  his  literary  friends 
in  London  when  he  left  it  to  take  charge  of  the  Courant. 
Mr.  Hepworth  Dixon  was  in  the  chair  on  that  occasion. 
And  I  am  sorry  to  say  that  the  dinner  did  not  pass 
off  without  some  little  friction  arising  from  that  smoulder- 
ing literary  feud  to  which  I  have  referred  at  the  begin- 
ning of  this  chapter.  Hannay  rather  resented  the 
somewhat  patronising  tone  in  which  the  Chairman 
proposed  his  health,  and  in  the  course  of  his  remarks 
curiously  enough  repeated  in  substance  what  Newman 
says  in  "  The  Office  and  Work  of  Universities,''  a  book 
which,  I  am  sure,  Hannay  had  never  seen.  He  said 
that  service  in  the  Navy  was  as  good  an  education  as 
life  in  a  college,  and  that  when  he  joined  the  literary 
circle  in  London  he  brought  with  him  a  training  which 


i82  TORY   MEMORIES. 

many  of  its  members  might  have  envied.  The  Navy 
was  his  university.  I  can't  recollect  his  exact  words, 
but  this  was  the  pith  of  what  he  said. 

At  another  dinner,  given  him  when  he  left  Edinburgh 
by  the  staff  and  business  employees  of  the  Courant,  he 
compared  himself  (as  Editor  of  that  fogified  organ)  to 
*'  a  solitary  centurion  left  in  defence  of  the  wall  of 
Hadrian."  He  came  back  to  London  in  1865  and  wrote 
for  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  just  then  launched  by  Mr. 
Frederick  Greenwood.  Another  of  his  witticisms  that 
I  recollect  was  delivered  about  this  time  when  a  deputa- 
tion from  the  licensed  victuallers  waited  on  him  with  a 
request  that  he  would  advocate  their  cause  against  the 
grocers  who  were  licensed  to  sell  wine  as  well  as  tea. 
*'  We  are  fighting/*  said  the  spokesman,  "  for  our  own 
rights,  the  right  to  sell  tea  as  well  as  wine.'*  *'  Yes,*' 
said  Hannay,  ''  I  see — it's  your  grape  against  their 
canister." 

But  Hannay  came  back  to  London  an  altered  man, 
and  he  sometimes  regretted  that  he  had  ever  left  it. 
The  death  of  his  first  wife — a  heavy  sorrow  to  him — 
changed  him  still  more,  and  when  he  accepted  from  the 
Government  the  consulship  at  Barcelona,  one  reason  for 
his  doing  so,  I  think,  was  because  he  felt  himself  changed, 
and  less  and  less  able  to  apply  himself  to  regular  work. 
He  had  also  at  that  time  some  pecuniary  embarrass- 
ments, which  made  a  change  of  climate  desirable ;  and 
as  I  first  saw  him  in  Bohemia,  so  I  last  saw  him  on  a 
spot  with  which  the  denizens  of  that  region  are  only  too 
familiar.  I  never  saw  him  again,  but  I  had  several 
letters  from  him,  one  written  at  a  time  when  his  second 
wife  was  on  her  death-bed,  in  which  he  says  :  "I  have 
taken  a  charming   country  house,   a  tower  or  '  Torre  ' 


TORY    BOHEMIA.  183 

on  the  slopes  behind  the  city,  with  a  garden  full  of  orange 
trees,  and  endless  classical  flowers  of  all  kinds,  and  where 
the  nightingale  sings  in  the  ivy,  as  at  Colonos.  She 
[his  wife]  delights  in  the  change  ;  but,  somehow,  the 
very  beauty  of  the  place  makes  it  all  the  sadder/' 
This  was  written  in  1870.  In  another  letter  he  says 
of  the  Spaniards  that  '*  they  smoke  everywhere  but  in 
the  kitchen  chimney/'  Hannay  was  never  more  really 
reconciled  to  his  exile  than  Ovid  was.  He  frequently 
spoke  of  paying  a  visit  to  London,  but  he  never  did, 
and  he  died  at  Barcelona  in  the  year  1873. 

I  subjoin  an  extract  from  another  of  his  letters  from 
Barcelona.  The  '*  citizen  of  a  greater  State "  is,  of 
course,  himself  : — 

Those  Yankees  are  devils  of  feUows,  with  plenty  of  money, 
given  to  hospitality,  and  many  of  them  as  good  conservatives  as 
you  or  I.  The  skipper  of  the  Wachuselt,  familiarly  known  in  the 
service  as  *'  Brassy  Bushman,'*  is  justly  described  by  his  officers 
as  a  caution  to  porcupines.  I  dined  with  him,  and  the  liquoring 
was  considerable.  With  their  queer  Yankee  frankness,  he  told  me 
that  his  father  had  had  some  Red  Indian  blood  in  his  veins,  which 
accounted  for  some  traits  in  the  paternal  character.  "  After  my 
brother's  death,"  said  the  skipper,  "  he  became  vindictive  and  mis- 
anthropical and  neglected  his  business."  A  sentence  which  stuck 
in  my  memory,  knowing  as  I  did  a  citizen  of  a  still  greater  State 
whose  history  it  partially  described  !  To  these  accidents  of  war- 
ships' visits — and  passing  tourists — ^we  owe  our  only  social  recrea- 
tion. T'other  day  I  talked  for  a  quarter  of  an  hour,  with  whom 
think  ye,  Keb  ?  the  ex-Duke  of  Tuscany — a  Hapsburg  and  cousin  of 
the  Kaiser.  He  is  rich,  unmarried,  accomplished,  and  comes  every 
summer  to  a  palace  he  has  in  the  Balearic  Isles.  I  have  been  advising 
Bessie,  who  is  now  a  fine  lass  of  seventeen,  to  set  her  cap  at  him, 
and  have  pointed  out  how  well  it  would  look  in  the  Dumfries  Courier. 
Galloway  would  be  convulsed,  and  I  would  send  all  my  old  classical 
and  feudal  friends  little  dona  of  real  Tokay  ! 

Bessie  was  Hannay's  eldest  daughter,  whom  I  re- 
member as  a  very  handsome  child ;  but  it  is  now  many 


i84  TORY   MEMORIES. 

years  since  I  set  eyes  on  her.  She  is  happily  married, 
I  beheve,  but  not  to  the  Grand  Duke. 

Hannay  I  shall  always  remember  in  connection  with 
my  own  sojourn  in  Bohemia:  When  I  think  of  that  life, 
I  think  of  him  and  Edgar,  and  not  of  anybody  else. 
But  I  knew  plenty  more,  who,  if  not  equal  to  Hannay, 
were  thoroughgoing  Bohemian  Tories.  There  was  Mor- 
timer Collins,  a  remarkably  clever  versifier,  who  ran  to 
seed  and  died  comparatively  young,  partly  no  doubt  in 
consequence  of  the  unnatural  life  he  led,  to  say  nothing 
of  his  convivial  excesses.  I  knew  him  first  as  a  con- 
tributor to  the  Idler  aforesaid,  in  which  he  wrote  some 
very  pretty  verses  called  ''  The  Ivory  Gate." 

Then  the  oars  of  Ithaca  dip  so 

Silently  into  the  sea, 
That  they  wake  not  sad  Calypso, 

And  the  hero  wanders  free. 
He  ploughs  the  ocean  furrows 

At  war  with  the  words  of  fate, 
And  the  blue  tide's  low  susurrus 

Comes  up  through  the  ivory  gate. 

He  was  a  ferocious  Tory  and  a  castigator  of  everything 
which  he  considered,  rightly  or  wrongly,  to  savour  of 
cant — as  often,  perhaps,  wrongly  as  rightly.  He  wrote 
a  comic  drama  in  imitation  of  ''  The  Birds  *'  of  Aristo- 
phanes, in  which  he  has  the  following  undeniably  witty 
jest  at  the  expense  of  Positivism,  it  being  nothing  to  the 
purpose  that  he  did  not  understand  what  it  was. 

There  was  an  ape  in  the  days  that  were  earlier ; 
Centuries  passed  and  his  hair  became  curlier ; 
Centuries  more  gave  a  thumb  to  his  wrist. 
Then  he  was  man,  and  a  Positivist. 

He  was  a  curious  creature  to  look  at.  He  always  dressed 
in  the  same  way,  winter  and  summer.     He  wore,  as  far 


TORY    BOHEMIA.  185 

as  I  remember,  an  ordinary  dark  morning  coat  with  a 
white  waistcoat  and  often  a  pair  of  rather  short  white 
trousers,  neither  of  the  two  garments  looking  as  if  it 
could  ever  have  been  clean.  He  usually  wore  a  round 
hat,  and  carried  a  parcel  of  books  under  his  arm. 
In  this  guise  he  might  have  been  seen  prowling  about 
the  newspaper  offices,  or,  if  in  cash,  driving  from  one  to 
another  in  a  hired  brougham,  still  the  same  dirty,  dis- 
reputable-looking object  that  I  have  described.  He 
was  a  tall,  well-made,  and  rather  good-looking  man, 
though  the  leer  with  which  he  usually  greeted  you  on 
meeting  him  in  the  street  was  not  an  agreeable  saluta- 
tion. I  have  no  reason  to  doubt  that  he  was  sincere  in 
his  Conservative  politics  and  in  his  dislike  of  Liberals 
and  Radicals.  But  there  was  sometimes  an  air  of 
affectation  in  his  political  utterances,  and  the  twinkle 
of  his  eye  and  the  expression  of  his  mouth  every  now 
and  then  seemed  to  say  :  *'  Fm  one  humbug,  and  you're 
another,  and  we  both  know  it.''  One  could  always  tell 
when  Collins  had  just  come  down  from  a  favourable 
interview  with  his  publisher.  After  making  shift  for 
a  dinner  as  well  as  he  could  for  months,  he  might  be 
met  some  day  with  his  pocket  full  of  money,  hurrying 
off,  perhaps  in  company  with  his  wife,  to  lunch  at  Birch's 
or  the  ''  Ship  "  on  turtle  and  punch  and  champagne. 

But  there  was  another  side  to  his  character  which 
presented  an  interesting  ethical  problem.  This  rattling, 
boisterous  man,  the  loudest  laugher  in  the  tavern,  coarse 
in  his  language,  coarse  in  his  tastes,  and  seemingly  only 
in  his  native  element  among  the  lowest  circles  of  Bohemia, 
was,  nevertheless,  a  sincere  lover  of  nature,  fond  of 
birds  and  flowers,  and  of  taking  long  walks  among  the 
woods  adjoining  the  little  Berkshire  village  in  which  he 


i86  TORY   MEMORIES. 

had  made  himself  a  nest.  Here  he  used  to  retire  after 
his  "  fling  "  in  the  metropolis  ;  and  here  I  visited  him 
more  than  once.  If  I  had  gone  much  oftener  I  should 
not  be  alive  to  tell  the  tale.  Talk  went  on  till  two  or 
three  o'clock  in  the  morning — talk  not  always  of  the 
most  refined  character.  The  next  morning  lunch  and 
breakfast  seemed  to  be  knocked  into  one,  cold  roast  beef 
and  port  wine  being  the  viands  on  which  Collinses  guests 
were  supposed  to  break  their  fast,  as  Collins  did  him- 
self. A  walk  in  the  afternoon  passed  away  the  time 
till  dinner,  which  was  of  an  equally  solid  and  substan- 
tial character  with  breakfast.  Collins,  I  believe,  only 
worked  at  night,  and  when  he  slept  I  don't  know.  He 
used  to  sit  down  to  write  at  ten  o'clock  at  night,  and  I 
suppose  he  went  on  till  about  six,  and  then  slept,  per- 
haps, till  eleven  or  twelve.  When  he  had  a  guest  in  the 
house,  however,  he  took  a  holiday,  for  he  was  throwing 
up  pebbles  at  my  bedroom  window  between  nine  and 
ten  in  the  morning. 

To  illustrate  his  fondness  for  birds,  and  the  con- 
fidence with  which  he  inspired  them,  he  showed  me 
a  thrush's  nest,  in  which  the  old  bird  was  sitting.  She 
suffered  Collins  to  approach  her  and  gently  stroke  her 
back  for  some  minutes,  and  probably  would  not  have 
moved  had  he  stood  there  longer.  This  I  thought 
very  curious.  To  see  this  great,  rough,  loud  roisterer, 
redolent  of  Fleet  Street  toddy  and  Bohemian  slang, 
suddenly  transformed  into  a  child  of  Nature,  and  capable 
of  charming  a  bird  upon  her  nest,  was  a  kind  of  revelation. 

One  of  Collins's  favourite  amusements  at  Knole 
Hill  was  to  stand  at  his  garden  gate  on  Sunday  morning 
and  watch  the  people  going  to  and  returning  from  church. 
The  different  countenances  which  they  wore  on  these 


TORY    BOHEMIA.  187 

occasions  respectively  afforded  him  intense  delight. 
They  went  with  gloomy  faces  and  came  back  with  very 
cheerful  ones.  This  Collins  interpreted  in  his  own 
fashion  as  a  sign  that  the  congregation  congratulated 
themselves  on  having  discharged  a  painful  duty  and 
got  it  over.  I  suggested  to  him  a  different  construction 
— namely,  that  they  might  have  heard  something  at 
church  which  did  them  good.  This  probability  did  not 
seem  to  have  occurred  to  him.  The  last  thing  I  heard  of 
Collins  was  that  he  had  been  selected  as  secretary  to 
some  newly  formed  company  at,  I  think,  Liverpool, 
as  being  calculated  from  his  size,  his  bearing,  and  the 
loudness  of  his  voice  to  ''  overawe  committees." 

Another  of  the  children  of  Bohemia  whom  I  knew 
well,  and  perhaps  the  ablest  man  among  them,  except 
Hannay,  was  Edward  Whitty.  He  was  not  a  Tory,  it 
is  true ;  but  he  did  not  enrol  himself  in  the  ranks  of 
the  opposite  party.  He  sat,  so  to  speak,  upon  the  cross- 
benches.  He  first  made  himself  famous  by  *'  The 
Stranger  in  Parliament,'*  a  series  of  papers  contributed 
to  the  Leader,  a  weekly  journal  owned  and  conducted 
by  Mr.  Pigott.  These  articles,  constituting  a  fresh  depar- 
ture in  journalism,  were  published  in  the  early  'fifties 
and  attracted  general  attention.  Whitty  was  a  great 
friend  of  mine,  and  outside  the  circle  of  my  immediate 
sodales,  as  Hannay  called  them,  I  thought  him  the 
best  of  the  Bohemians.  He  was  a  Roman  Cathohc, 
but  so  accustomed  to  look  at  the  humorous  side  of  public 
questions  that  it  was  easy  to  talk  with  him  without 
lapsing  into  controversy.  But  he  had  rather  con- 
fused ideas  about  EngHsh  politics ;  and  I  remember  in 
one  of  his  books,  after  drawing  a  highly  coloured  picture 
of  the  state  of  the  Haymarket  at  two  o'clock  in  the 


i88  TORY    MEMORIES. 

morning,  in  those  days  the  rendezvous  of  the  demi- 
monde and  their  admirers,  he  cries  out,  *'  And  bishops 
sleep  in  their  beds,"  etc.  As  I  asked,  when  noticing  his 
book  in  the  press,  *'  Where  should  bishops  be  at  two 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  but  in  their  beds  ?  He  wouldn't 
have  had  them  in  the  Haymarket,  would  he  ?  ''  Whitty, 
however,  if  not  a  profound  reasoner,  was  a  most  amusing 
companion,  and  he  had  all  the  qualities  of  a  true 
Bohemian  :  all  the  wit,  all  the  weaknesses,  all  the  care- 
lessness about  money,  and  all  the  generosity  with  which 
they  give  it  to  a  friend  in  need. 

He  took  the  editorship  of  the  Northern  Whig  at 
Belfast  in  1857  i  t)ut,  not  succeeding,  he  ultimately 
went  to  Australia,  and  there,  I  think,  he  died  in  the  year 
i860.  He  was  not  reckless  or  slovenly  like  Collins, 
nor  addicted  to  six  tumblers  hke  Edgar ;  but  he  knew 
nothing  of  any  other  society  than  that  of  Bohemia,  and 
lived  in  it  contentedly  as  long  as  he  was  in  London- 
One  of  his  fellow  tribesmen,  who  shall  be  nameless, 
once  delighted  Whitty  very  much  by  the  reply  which 
he  gave  to  a  magistrate  who  made  some  caustic  remarks 
upon  the  effect  of  gin-drinking  on  literature.  The 
gentleman  in  question  came  before  him  as  a  witness, 
not  a  prisoner,  to  give  evidence  in  favour  of  some  friend 
who  had  got  into  trouble  on  his  way  home  from  the 
''  Cheshire  Cheese.'*  The  witness,  who  had  been  drink- 
ing gin  punch  with  him  up  to  a  late  hour,  was  required 
to  state  in  what  condition  his  friend  was  when  he  left 
that  tavern.  His  evidence,  however,  was  of  such  a 
confused  character  that  the  magistrate  evidently  thought 
that  the  witness  had  been  as  drunk  as  the  prisoner. 
''  Don't  you  find,  sir,"  said  the  magistrate  with  great 
severity,  "  that  your  books  " — for  the  witness  was^an 


TORY   BOHEMIA.  189 

author — ''  smell  of  gin  ?  '*  ''  They  do/'  was  the  reply, 
"  and  they  sell  in  consequence/' 

I  remember  two  or  three  more  who,  though  often  in 
Bohemia  and  mixing  freely  with  the  natives,  were 
not  of  the  true  breed,  but  who,  in  their  avoidance  of 
polite  society  and  their  devotion  to  the  tavern  life, 
resembled  them  so  much  that  they  may  well  find  a 
place  among  my  memories.  One  such  was  a  man  of 
good  family  in  the  West  of  England,  a  staunch  Tory,  a 
good  scholar,  and  a  sound  Churchman,  yet  addicted  to 
what  Johnson  pleasantly  calls  the  lighter  vices.  He 
lived  in  chambers  and  announced  that  he  had  entirely 
given  up  going  out  to  dinner  because  he  could  not  bear 
the  trouble  of  dressing.  He  was,  however,  a  thorough 
gentleman.  He  was  at  Westminster  and  Christchurch, 
and  knew  Homer  and  Horace  thoroughly.  I  quote 
him  now  as  a  solitary  instance  of  Bohemian  piety  sur- 
viving in  such  incongruous  surroundings.  He,  too,  was 
a  great  frequenter  of  the  ''  Cock.'*  And  I  remember  his 
being  found  one  evening  at  the  time  of  the  Paris  Com- 
mune sitting  in  a  box  by  himself  with  a  tumbler  of 
punch  by  his  side,  and  solemnly  reading  the  Commina- 
tion  Service.  He  thought  the  outbreak  of  the  Com- 
mune was  a  righteous  retribution  following  the  social 
wickedness  of  the  Second  Empire,  for  he  had  been  given 
to  understand  there  were  not  ten  righteous  men  or  women 
to  be  found  in  Paris.  So  strange  a  mixture  of  open 
and  avowed  profligacy  with  unaffected  religious  feel- 
ing I  never  met  with,  nor  heard  of,  unless  it  was  in 
Steele  himself,  to  whom  the  above-mentioned  words  of 
Dr.  Johnson  were  applied. 

I  suppose,  however,  that  such  cases  are  in  reality 
far  from  uncommon ;    for,  as  we  all  know,  men's  lives 


I  go  TORY   MEMORIES. 

do  not  always  correspond  to  their  beliefs,  even  when  these 
are  perfectly  sincere.  But  there  was  something  more 
than  this  in  the  very  blended  character  of  my  friend. 
His  evil  life  he  led  in  perfect  good  faith,  without,  I 
beHeve,  seeing  any  harm  in  it,  or  wishing  to  disguise  it. 
His  religious  spirit  was  perfectly  simple  and  unaffected ; 
there  never  was  a  man,  either  in  Bohemia  or  out  of  it, 
with  less  taint  of  hypocrisy  about  him.  The  blend 
was  quite  unique. 

A  very  popular  inhabitant  of  Tory  Bohemia  was 
Sutherland  Edwards,  who,  indeed,  was  at  home  in 
every  cHme  and  in  every  circle.  He  and  Hannay  had 
been  free  of  the  literary  brotherhood  long  before  I 
knew  them,  and  had  tales  to  tell  distantly  reminding 
one  of  Johnson  and  Savage.  I  first  won  Edwards's 
regard  by  saying  of  Mr.  Gladstone  many  long  years 
ago  that  he  was  the  kind  of  man  to  dine  at  two  o'clock 
and  have  an  egg  with  his  tea  ;  not  that  I  supposed  him 
actually  to  do  this,  but  that  such  was  his  temperament 
— a  supposition,  I  believe,  not  founded  on  fact.  The 
Bohemians  of  those  days  were  occasionally  impransi, 
and  Edwards  wrote  some  verses  commemorative  of 
a  consultation  in  which  various  schemes  for  procuring 
that  day's  meal  were  discussed  and  abandoned.  There 
is  a  certain  humour  about  them  which,  however,  may 
not  be  tasted  by  everybody.  I  only  remember  the 
last  stanza  : — 

There's  Jones:   he  has  a  joint  at  five; 
But  then  it's  such  a  way, 

I  think  we'll  have  an  eariy  tea, 
We  cannot  dine  to-day. 

A  great  friend  of  Edwards  and  Hannay  and  myself 
was  Dr.  Steele,  always  a  welcome   guest  in  Bohemian 


TORY   BOHEMIA.  191 

circles,  a  good  scholar,  a  capital  talker,  and  a  most 
amiable  and  agreeable  man.  He  was  on  the  staff  of  the 
Lancet  for  thirty  years.  He  was  strong  in  Horace, 
and  wrote  very  fluent  alcaics  worthy  the  countryman 
of  Buchanan.  I  mention  this  to  show  once  more  that 
Bohemia  was  not  barbarous,  as  Boileau  supposed  England 
to  be  till  he  saw  Addison's  Latin  verses. 

I  must  conclude  this  chapter  with  one  more  speci- 
men of  the  genus,  who,  without  being  an  all-round 
Bohemian,  was  good  enough  for  me,  and,  without  being 
a  declared  Tory,  wrote  for  a  Tory  paper,  and  practically 
belonged  to  that  party.  Johnny  Baker  was  a  distin- 
guished classical  scholar,  but  he  washed  up  in  London 
as  a  journalist  some  years  after  he  left  the  University. 
His  proceedings  were  peculiar.  He  would  write  well 
and  brilliantly  for,  say,  three  or  four  months  at  a  stretch, 
at  the  expiration  of  which  time  he  would  rush  one  day 
into  his  Editor's  room  and  declare  his  intention  of 
taking  a  holiday  forthwith.  *'  Tm  off  into  the  country," 
he  would  say ;  ''  shan't  leave  my  address  either  with 
you  or  anybody  else.  Nobody " — with  a  chuckle — 
''  will  be  able  to  find  me."  And  off  he  went,  burying 
himself  in  some  obscure  public-house  in  a  remote  part 
of  the  country,  and  drinking  steadily  for  weeks  together. 
When  he  had  had  enough  he  would  return  to  town  as 
suddenly  as  he  had  left  it,  give  himself  a  hot  bath,  and 
turn  up  at  the  newspaper  office  the  next  day,  clean, 
sensible,  and  ready  to  begin  work  again  directly.  The 
drink  seemed  to  have  no  effect  upon  him  at  all,  so  far  as 
one  could  judge. 

I  don't  know  whether  this  wild  country  still  exists, 
or  has  been  disforested.  I  have  not  taken  my  readers, 
nor  did  I  venture  myself,  into  some  of  its  innermost 


192  TORY    MEMORIES. 

recesses,  where  in  those  days  it  was  said  that  if  a  man 
had  shown  himself  in  evening  dress,  he  would  have  been 
torn  to  pieces.  I  am  not  ashamed  to  say  I  enjoyed  my 
own  experience  of  it  very  much ;  but  perhaps  I  only 
saw  the  bright  side  of  it.  Anyway,  the  memories 
of  Bohemia  transcend  the  memories  of  Mayfair,  and 
are  equal,  I  think,  to  those  of  Arcadia,  though  very 
different  in  kind. 


CHAPTER   XIV. 

TORY   CLUBS. 

The  Tumbler  and  its  Leading  Spirits — The  Rambler — Installation  at 
Dick's — Witty  Irish  Members — Jack  Ormsby — His  Narrow  Escape 
from  Drowning — His  Liking  for  Practical  Jokes — Toryism  and 
Scholarship — Gowen  Evans — Sotheby — Trevor  :  a  Loud  Snorer — 
— His  Cynicism — George  Danvers  and  the  Sub-Editorial  Nose — 
Henry  Fawcett — Twenty  Years  Afterwards — The  Canning  Club — 
The  Cecil — The  Junior  Carlton  and  St.  Stephen's. 

I  HAVE  been  associated  with  the  foundation  of  three 
Tory  clubs,  one  of  which  exists  still.  The  others,  though 
not  nominally  and  ostentatiously  Tory,  deserve  the 
title,  because  four-fifths  of  the  members  belonged  to 
that  party.  I  am  not  going  to  take  my  readers  into 
the  august  penetralia  of  the  Carlton  or  White's — in 
tenui  labor — nor  into  the  first  institution  of  this  character 
to  which  I  belonged.  It  ought  more  properly  to  have 
come  under  the  head  of  Bohemia,  and  I  am  afraid 
that  its  habits  were  of  somewhat  too  convivial  a  cast 
to  find  favour  with  this  degenerate  age.  Its  name  was 
the  Tumbler.  Hannay  and  Edgar,  of  whom  I  have  had 
something  to  say  in  the  chapter  on  Tory  Bohemia, 
were  its  leading  spirits,  and  they  generally  succeeded  in 
checking  any  tendency  to  Liberalism  or  Radicalism 
which  the  conversation  might  betray.  I  think  the 
Tumbler  only  lasted  one  year,  but  from  its  loins  sprang 
another,  which  had  a  much  longer  lease  of  life,  and 
numbered  in  its  ranks  men  who  afterwards  made  some 

N  193 


192  TORY    MEMORIES. 

recesses,  where  in  those  days  it  was  said  that  if  a  man 
had  shown  himself  in  evening  dress,  he  would  have  been 
torn  to  pieces.  I  am  not  ashamed  to  say  I  enjoyed  my 
own  experience  of  it  very  much ;  but  perhaps  I  only 
saw  the  bright  side  of  it.  Anjrway,  the  memories 
of  Bohemia  transcend  the  memories  of  Mayfair,  and 
are  equal,  I  think,  to  those  of  Arcadia,  though  very 
different  in  kind. 


CHAPTER   XIV. 

TORY   CLUBS. 

The  Tumbler  and  its  Leading  Spirits — The  Rambler — Installation  at 
Dick's — Witty  Irish  Members — Jack  Ormsby — His  Narrow  Escape 
from  Drowning — His  Liking  for  Practical  Jokes — Toryism  and 
Scholarship — Gowen  Evans — Sotheby — Trevor  :  a  Loud  Snorer — 
— His  Cynicism — George  Danvers  and  the  Sub-Editorial  Nose — 
Henry  Fawcett — Twenty  Years  Afterwards — The  Canning  Club — 
The  Cecil — The  Junior  Carlton  and  St.  Stephen's. 

I  HAVE  been  associated  with  the  foundation  of  three 
Tory  clubs,  one  of  which  exists  still.  The  others,  though 
not  nominally  and  ostentatiously  Tory,  deserve  the 
title,  because  four-fifths  of  the  members  belonged  to 
that  party.  I  am  not  going  to  take  my  readers  into 
the  august  penetralia  of  the  Carlton  or  White's — in 
tenui  labor — nor  into  the  first  institution  of  this  character 
to  which  I  belonged.  It  ought  more  properly  to  have 
come  under  the  head  of  Bohemia,  and  I  am  afraid 
that  its  habits  were  of  somewhat  too  convivial  a  cast 
to  find  favour  with  this  degenerate  age.  Its  name  was 
the  Tumbler.  Hannay  and  Edgar,  of  whom  I  have  had 
something  to  say  in  the  chapter  on  Tory  Bohemia, 
were  its  leading  spirits,  and  they  generally  succeeded  in 
checking  any  tendency  to  Liberalism  or  Radicalism 
which  the  conversation  might  betray.  I  think  the 
Tumbler  only  lasted  one  year,  but  from  its  loins  sprang 
another,  which  had  a  much  longer  lease  of  Ufe,  and 
numbered  in  its  ranks  men  who  afterwards  made  some 

N  193 


194  TORY    MEMORIES. 

figure  in  the  world.  It  was  not  entirely  devoted  to  the 
rites  of  Bacchus,  which  caused  a  former  member  of  the 
Tumbler  and  the  nephew  of  a  Bishop  to  say  to  me,  with 
scorn  and  derision,  when  I  explained  the  nature  of 
the  new  club  to  him,  ''  Ah,  I  see  :  the  Tumbler  with  a 
little  water  in  it.*'  He  refused  to  join  it,  though  he  was 
a  very  pronounced  Tory,  with  a  pleasant  wit — as  in  his 
reply  to  one  who  was  asserting  that  the  French  Revolu- 
tion had  started  a  new  order  of  things  in  Europe,  and 
that  you  couldn't  go  behind  it.  ''I  wish  I  could,*'  he 
said;  "I'd  lend  it  a  toe."  However,  we  had  to  go  on 
without  this  agreeable  gentleman,  and  when  I  tell  my 
readers  at  once  that  this  club  met  every  night  from 
November  ist  to  August  ist,  and  that  it  lasted  nine 
years,  I  think  they  will  agree  with  me  that  it  must 
have  had  some  salt  in  it. 

It  was  called  the  Rambler,  and  when  it  was  at  its 
fullest  numbered  some  three-and-twenty  members — 
barristers,  journalists,  men  of  letters,  artists,  Fellows 
of  Colleges,  of  whom  about  fifteen  were  declared  Tories, 
and  of  the  rest  I  can  only  remember  two  who  ever  called 
themselves  anything  else.  We  drank  the  health  of 
Lord  Derby  and  of  Disraeli  solemnly  every  Saturday 
night,  which  was  the  guest  night,  and  during  the  week 
many  vigorous  onslaughts  on  our  foes  and  ingenious 
defences  of  our  friends  were  the  work  of  Ramblers. 
Our  place  of  meeting  when  we  finally  settled  down  was 
just  what  the  home  of  such  a  club  should  be.  We  had 
tried  one  or  two  others  first.  We  thought  the  old 
"  Mitre,"  in  Fleet  Street,  a  respectable  tavern  where 
you  could  get  a  good  dinner  and  good  wine,  would  suit 
us.  The  venerable  name  of  Johnson,  too,  seemed  to 
point  it  out  as  the  proper  resort  of  a  Tory  club.     But, 


TORY    CLUBS.  195 

for  some  reason  or  other,  it  did  not  please  us,  and  after 
trying  another  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Covent  Garden 
we  ultimately  fixed  upon  Dick's,  that  famous  tavern 
whither  Steele  took  his  party  from  Shire  Lane,  where 
Cowper,  when  living  in  the  Temple,  came  to  breakfast  in 
his  dressing-gown,  and  where  Mr.  Bungay  *' invited  Mr. 
Finucane  and  Mr.  Trotter  to  cut  their  mutton  ''  with  him 
and  talk  over  the  new  evening  paper  to  be  brought  out 
by  that  enterprising  publisher.  Dick's  was  a  house 
with  a  history,  and  when  the  Ramblers  took  up  their 
abode  there  it  was  fairly  prosperous.  Our  club  room  was 
a  large  room  upstairs  with  windows  looking  out  on  Hare 
Court,  and  two  or  three  of  us  generally  dined  in  the 
coffee  room. 

For  the  first  few  years  we  had  among  us  two  or  three 
very  pleasant  Irish  law  students,  all  educated  at  Trinity 
College,  Dublin,  well-born,  cultivated  gentlemen  with 
no  signs  about  them  of  that  scarcity  of  coin  which  it 
has  pleased  some  ill-natured  satirists  to  regard  as  a 
frequent  characteristic  of  their  countrymen  in  London. 
They  were  well-read  and  witty  men,  and  one  of  them 
(Whitley  Stokes)  is  now  among  the  first  Celtic  scholars  of 
the  day.  He  was  in  India  for  nineteen  years,  and  did 
not  return  till  the  Rambler  was  no  more.  The  others, 
all  but  one,  went  back  to  Dublin  to  practise  at  the  Irish 
Bar,  and  Dick's  was  duller  for  the  want  of  them. 

Another  of  the  Irish  party,  also  from  Trinity,  Dublin, 
unlike  the  others,  had  come  to  stay.  He  was  not  a 
law  student.  He  still  had  some  Httle  landed  property 
in  Ireland — all  that  was  left  to  him  out  of  a  con- 
siderable estate  when  the  Encumbered  Estates  Act  had 
done  with  it.  On  this  he  lived,  with  such  addition 
to    his    income    as    he    could    make  by  writing ;    for 


196  TORY    MEMORIES. 

he  was  a  very  clever  and  humorous  essayist  and  a 
great  favourite  with  Douglas  Cook,  the  first  Editor 
of  the  Saturday  Review.  I  am  speaking  of  that  good 
Irish  Tory,  John  Ormsby,  one  of  my  dearest  friends, 
and  one  of  the  best  men  to  go  about  with — as  I  once 
heard  someone  say  of  Jack  Mytton  —  that  I  ever 
met.  He  was  of  an  old  Anglo-Irish  family,  the  son 
of  an  old  Peninsular  man,  and  grandson  of  the  Colonel 
Ormsby  who  was  described  by  the  Times  in  1798  as 
having  been  ''  very  busy  among  the  rebels.'*  My  friend 
would  have  made  a  fine  light  cavalryman ;  but  his  lot 
was  otherwise  ordained,  and  it  was  good  for  us  at  Dick's 
that  it  was  so  ;  for  he  was  the  fife  and  soul  of  the 
Ramblers,  and  a  very  constant  attendant. 

I  did  a  good  deal  of  ''going  about"  with  Jack,  as  we 
always  called  him.  I  remember  one  experience  in  par- 
ticular. I  don't  know  how  it  happened,  but  once  in  the 
middle  of  June  we  found  ourselves  about  five  o'clock  in 
the  morning  on  London  Bridge.  It  was  a  beautiful  bright 
morning,  and  the  river  looked  lovely.  We  were  neither 
of  us  inclined  to  go  to  bed  ;  but  we  were  getting  hungry, 
and  at  last  the  idea  occurred  to  one  of  us  that  we 
might  go  and  breakfast  at  Billingsgate.  We  had  often 
dined  there  at  the  fish  dinner ;  so  we  knew  where  to 
go,  and  a  capital  breakfast  we  had  in  the  room  with 
the  fish  salesmen.  Such  coffee  and  such  broiled  salmon 
I  have  rarely  tasted.  I  tell  this  story  without  any 
compunction ;  for,  according  to  Jack's  namesake  in 
*'  Coningsby,"  no  Tory  ought  to  be  ashamed  of  being 
up  all  night.  We  got  our  breakfast  about  seven,  and 
smoked  and  looked  at  the  market  till  about  nine,  when 
we  slowly  strolled  back  by  way  of  Cheapside  and  New- 
gate, till  we  reached  Holborn  Hill,  where  we  parted, 


TORY    CLUBS.  197 

Jack  to  his  chambers  in  the  Temple  and  I  to  mine  in 
Gray's  Inn. 

This  mention  of  BiUingsgate  reminds  me  of  another 
curious  trait  in  the  character  of  the  gentleman  who  was 
found  reading  the  Commination  service.*  He  took 
his  two  sisters,  two  country  girls,  daughters  of  a 
wealthy  clergyman,  to  dine  at  the  fish  dinner  at  four 
o'clock  p.m.,  and  was  very  much  astonished  that  they 
refused  to  stay  when  long  clay  pipes  and  gin  punch 
were  produced. 

To  return  to  Jack  Ormsby  :  another  time  he  was 
anxious  that  I  should  go  with  him  to  a  prize  fight,  which 
I  agreed  to,  but  was  prevented  at  the  last  moment.  He 
himself  wrote  a  graphic  account  of  it  in  the  Cornhill, 
and  gave  an  equally  lively  description  of  it  at  Dick's 
when  my  Commination  friend,  who,  as  I  have  said, 
knew  his  Horace,  happened  to  be  present.  The  fight 
took  place  somewhere  down  the  river,  and,  of 
course,  on  board  the  steamer  there  was  the  usual  con- 
course of  roughs  and  men  who  made  you  feel  glad  that 
you  had  left  your  watch  at  home.  Someone  whom 
Ormsby  knew  told  him  that  he  kept  a  sovereign  in  his 
boot.  *'  Ha !  "  said  our  classical  gentleman,  '*  licet 
super  bus  amhules  pecunia.'" 

We  very  nearly  lost  our  dear  Jack  during  the  early 
Rambler  days.  Hannay,  who  was  not  a  member  of  the 
club,  but  who  was  continually  mixing  with  us,  pro- 
posed to  Stokes,  Ormsby,  and  one  or  two  others  that 
they  should  come  down  to  see  him,  I  think  at  Southend, 
where  he  had  gone  with  his  wife.  They  went,  and 
Hannay  took  them  out  for  a  sail.  Someone  suggested 
bathing,  and  Ormsby  and  Stokes  each  took  a  header 

*  See  ante,  p.  189. 


198  TORY    MEMORIES. 

into  the  sea.  After  they  had  been  swimming  about 
for  a  short  time,  what  was  their  horror  to  see  the  boat 
gradually  receding  from  them.  Whether  Hannay  had 
done  it  for  a  joke,  or  whether  from  sheer  thoughtlessness, 
I  never  knew ;  but,  fortunately,  he  was  made  aware 
of  the  situation  in  time,  and  just  picked  up  poor  Ormsby 
when  he  was  nearly  exhausted.  I  think  if  Ormsby  had 
been  drowned  the  Rambler  would  have  ceased  to  exist. 

Ormsby  at  that  time  used  to  visit  his  property  in 
Mayo  every  year,  and  stay  at  the  old  house,  Gortnor 
Abbey,  which  has  since  been  turned  into  an  hotel ;  and 
while  he  was  in  London  he  often  received  letters  from 
his  tenants  with  various  complaints  or  petitions,  very 
often  of  the  most  grotesque  character,  which  their  land- 
lord would  bring  down  to  the  Ramblers  and  read  to  us. 
One  poor  fellow  required  his  landlord  to  compensate 
him  for  the  loss  of  his  ear,  which  some  Mike  or  Pat  upon 
the  estate  had  ''  spited  off.''  The  relics  of  Jack's  pro- 
perty came  to  an  end  at  last,  and  Gortnor  knew  him 
no  more  ;  but  he  did  not  leave  the  Temple  for  some 
years  after  this,  and  after  the  Ramblers  had  dispersed, 
many  an  evening  I  spent  with  him  in  King's  Bench 
Walk,  listening  to  his  talk  about  Ireland,  or  Spain,  or 
Africa.  I  remember  his  coming  back  from  Algeria  with 
a  face  burned  to  the  colour  of  a  new  brick,  only  to  tell 
us,  however,  that  he  had  not  succeeded  in  shooting  a 
lion,  but  had  only  heard  one  roar  in  the  distance.  In 
Spain  he  had  explored  Castile  on  foot,  and  so  prepared 
himself  for  that  translation  of  **  Don  Quixote  "  which 
was  almost  his  last  literary  undertaking.  His  health 
broke  down  soon  after,  and  he  died  in,  I  think,  the  year 
1887. 

He  was  a  man  whom  it  was  refreshing  even  to  look 


TORY    CLUBS.  199 

at,  and  had  a  humour  of  his  own,  which  was  always 
finding  vent,  no  matter  what  the  subject.  He  wrote 
a  good  deal  for  the  Saturday  Review  when  that  journal 
was  at  the  height  of  its  reputation,  and  some  of  his 
papers  in  Fraser  and  the  Cornhill  were  quite  equal  to 
Charles  Lamb.  I  may  mention  two  in  particular,  one 
on  Street  Boys  and  another  on  Loose  Men,  brim  full  of 
fun,  and  the  last  especially  showing  a  talent  for  character- 
drawing  which  many  more  eminent  men  might  have 
envied,  and  which,  had  he  made  the  most  of  it,  might 
have  permanently  enriched  him.  He  was  a  good  Spanish 
and  German  scholar,  and  his  translations  from  both  lan- 
guages were  highly  praised  by  unimpeachable  judges. 
He  could  write  verse  as  well  as  prose,  and  an  imi- 
tation of  Browning's  ''  Through  the  Metidja  to  Abd-el- 
Kadr ''  in  his  ''  Rambles  in  North  Africa*'  is  worthy  to 
rank  with  Bon  Gaultier.  He  was  as  clever  with  his 
pencil  as  with  his  pen,  and  illustrated  some  of  his  own 
books  with  great  skill  and  humour.  In  Jack,  if  ever  in 
any  man,  was  the  mens  sana  in  corpore  sano.  He  was  a 
well-known  mountaineer,  and  had  climbed  some  of  the 
highest  peaks  in  Switzerland.  He  had  gone  for  bears 
in  the  Pyrenees,  and  stalked  chamois  on  the  Alps. 

Ormsby  was  at  home  in  all  kinds  of  society,  and  de- 
lighted to  visit  every  scene  in  which  human  nature  could 
be  studied.  I  have  told  about  his  visit  to  a  prize  fight,  and 
I  must  add  a  brief  description  of  what  he  saw  at  Greenwich 
Fair.  This  delighted  him.  Standing  outside  one  of  the 
booths,  which  was  densely  packed  with  a  crowd  to  whom 
it  barely  afforded  standing  room,  he  observed  that  the 
figures  of  those  pressed  up  against  the  canvas  walls  within 
were  very  clearly  delineated  on  that  material.  One 
unhappy  man  or  boy — he  never  knew  which,   but   I 


200  TORY   MEMORIES. 

suppose  the  latter — was  so  tightly  squeezed  against  the 
canvas  that  the  part  of  him  which  some  philosophers 
assert  to  have  been  intended  by  Nature  for  the  recep- 
tion of  punishment  protruded  very  visibly,  and  offered 
a  temptation  which  a  barbarous  wag  outside  was  un- 
able to  resist.  He  carried  in  his  hand  a  thin  switch  cane, 
which  he  applied  vigorously  to  the  person  of  the  poor 
wretch  within,  for  whom,  of  course,  there  was  no  escape. 
The  contortions  of  the  miserable  victim,  as  every  stroke 
told  upon  the  canvas,  which  was  quite  "  taut,''  his  un- 
avaiHng  writhings,  and  vain  attempts  to  straighten 
himself,  used  to  be  described  by  Jack  with  infinite 
gusto.  A  kinder-hearted  man  never  breathed.  But 
there  is  a  certain  class  of  humorists — I  have  encountered 
several  of  them — who  are  at  the  mercy  of  their  pre- 
dominant faculty,  and  who,  when  once  their  keen  sense 
of  the  ludicrous  is  roused,  are  oblivious  for  the  moment 
of  every  other  consideration.  I  am  afraid  my  friend 
Jack  was  one  of  these  from  his  youth  up  ;  for  the  stories 
which  he  had  to  tell  of  his  school-days  discovered  the 
same  propensity  at  work,  and  recorded  the  sufferings 
at  his  hands  of  many  inoffensive  beings. 

Jack  had  these  Httle  weaknesses,  but  he  was,  in  the 
best  sense  of  the  word,  ''  a  choice  spirit.'*  His  Irish  wit 
and  his  English  common-sense  made  him  a  dehghtful 
companion  at  all  times,  whether  gaiety  or  gravity  was 
uppermost ;  and  his  sound  Tory  principles,  coupled  with 
his  very  wide  sympathies,  made  him  an  ideal  politician 
in  the  eyes  of  the  enhghtened  circle  with  whom  Palmer- 
ston  was  nearly  as  great  a  favourite  as  Derby.  Palmer- 
ston  was  a  man  after  Ormsby's  own  heart,  and  the 
Rambler  Tories  in  general  regarded  him  with  a  friendly 
eye.     The  geniality  of  the  man  captivated  them.     But 


TORY    CLUBS.  201 

there  were  some  among  them  who  looked  further  ahead 
and  considered  what  his  pohtical  conduct  was  hkely 
to  lead  to  in  the  future.  The  Ramblers  saw  even  at 
that  early  date  what  a  splendid  opportunity  had  been 
lost,  both  in  1855  and  in  1858,  of  forming  a  powerful 
Conservative  Government,  and  there  were  those 
who  regarded  Lord  Palmerston  as  the  chief  obstacle 
to  it.  Others  threw  the  blame  almost  exclusively  on 
Gladstone. 

After  the  Dublin  Ramblers,  I  come  to  the  Oxford 
and  Cambridge  men  who  figured  in  the  club's  catalogue. 
Brandt,  one  of  the  foremost  among  them,  a  most  uncom- 
promising Tory,  who  repudiated  Palmerston,  was  a  man 
of  great  intellectual  powers,  but  of  very  original  habits. 
He  was  a  scholar  of  his  college  at  Oxford,  and  second  for 
the  Hertford  scholarship  ;  and  illness  alone  prevented 
him  from  taking  high  honours  in  the  final  examination. 
He  was,  it  is  needless  to  say,  an  excellent  classical 
scholar — and  scholarship,  by  many  of  the  Ramblers, 
was  considered  to  be  a  kind  of  handmaid  of  Toryism. 
If  we  go  far  enough  back  we  shall  find  that  some  of  our 
best-known  scholars,  such  as  Addison,  Gray,  and  Dr. 
Parr  were  Whigs  ;  but  later,  after  the  alliance  between 
the  Whigs  and  the  Radicals,  the  former  seem  to  have 
put  Greek  and  Latin  in  the  background  in  deference  to 
their  new  friends.  Thus  Lord  Wellesley,  Lord  Gren- 
ville.  Lord  Derby,  and  Mr.  Canning  came  to  be  regarded 
as  the  chief  representatives  of  classical  scholarship  among 
statesmen.  It  was  known,  or  believed,  that  Radicals 
looked  with  an  evil  eye  on  the  Universities,  and  that  in 
the  lower  strata  of  that  party  classical  culture  was 
thought  to  savour  of  aristocratic  insolence.  Of  course, 
a  number  of  young  men  just  fresh  from  Oxford  and 


202  TORY    MEMORIES. 

Cambridge,  or  nearly  so,  and  already  enlisted  on  the 
Tory  side,  took  up  the  challenge  readily.  Some  of  us 
contributed  Latin  verses  to  the  *'  Horse  Tennysonianae,'* 
a  little  volume  highly  commended  by  the  late 
Mr.  Calverley.  Brandt  translated  the  "  De  Corona  '* 
of  Demosthenes.  Several  of  our  other  members  had 
distinguished  themselves  at  one  or  other  University. 
White  was  a  Fellow  of  New  College  and  first  classman, 
and  won  the  Latin  Essay  prize.  Sotheby  was  a  first- 
class  man  and  gained  the  Latin  verse  prize  at  Charter- 
house and  the  English  essay  at  Oxford.  Powell,  when 
elected  to  an  open  scholarship  at  Lincoln,  wrote  a  piece 
of  Latin  prose  which  Mark  Pattison  said  you  could  hardly 
distinguish  from  Cicero.  I  ran  second  for  the  Latin 
verse  myself  at  Oxford.  Frank  Conington,  a  brother 
of  the  Professor,  and  Henry  Wadham  were  Fellows 
of  Corpus.  Sotheby  and  Charles  (now  Sir  Charles) 
Turner  were  Fellows  of  Exeter.  Roberts  of  Jesus,  now 
Sir  Owen  Roberts,  and  Clerk  of  the  Clothworkers' 
Company,  was  also  one  of  us,  and  so  too  was  Lomer  of 
Oriel,  who,  but  for  failing  health,  promised  soon  to  be 
leader  of  the  Western  Circuit.  He  was  a  regular  leader 
writer  on  the  Spectator  in  its  palmy  days,  and  was  a 
Liberal.  But  he  was  well  read  in  literature,  and  a  good 
talker  on  literary  questions.  A.  G.  Marten,  for  some 
years  member  for  the  town  of  Cambridge  ;  D.  V.  Durell, 
and  Henry  Fawcett,  of  Trinity  Hall,  afterwards  Consul- 
General  and  judge  in  the  Supreme  Court  at  Constanti- 
nople, represented  Cambridge.  All  these  men,  I  think, 
except  Durell,  were  either  regular  Tories  or  men  who, 
if  they  did  not  call  themselves  by  that  name,  were 
averse  to  calling  themselves  by  any  other. 

I   had  nearly  omitted  Gowen  Evans,  who,   I  think, 


TORY    CLUBS.  203 

was  a  Tory  when  he  joined  the  Club.  He  took  honours 
in  mathematics,  but  he  went  out  to  Melbourne  as  manager 
of  the  Argus,  and  came  back  a  rabid  Tory,  for  whom  I 
wasn't  half  good  enough.  But  by  that  time  the  Rambler 
had  departed.  The  principal  Ramblers  who  were  not 
Oxford  or  Cambridge  men  were  Charles,  now  Sir  Arthur 
Charles,  formerly  a  judge  of  the  High  Court,  and  after- 
wards Dean  of  Arches,  who  was  educated  at  the  London 
University  and  was  a  good  scholar,  as  well  as  an  ex- 
cellent lawyer.  Next  to  him  comes  Button  Cook,  the 
well-known  dramatic  and  art  critic  ;  and  last,  but  not 
least,  R.  A.  Trevor,  in  whose  veins  it  was  whispered  ran 
royal  blood. 

Thus  it  will  be  seen  we  had  a  tolerably  good  mixture, 
and  some  very  good  conversation  might  have  been 
heard  in  that  upper  room  at  Dick's,  alike  on  books, 
plays,  and  politics.  I  remember  one  or  two  keen  con- 
tests between  the  Lake  School  and  the  Popian.  The 
Irishmen,  I  think,  were  strictly  Wordsworthian. 
Griffiths,  whom  I  have  not  yet  named,  another  Dublin 
man,  afterwards  Attorney-General  at  the  Cape,  was 
strong  against  Pope.  Lomer,  though  a  Liberal,  de- 
fended him  stoutly,  and  spoke  highly  of  the  eighteenth 
century  school.  I  remember  his  saying  that  the  old 
heroic  metre,  as  written  by  them,  was  the  noblest  in 
the  language.  Brandt  was  a  great  Shakespearian. 
Durell  was  a  formidable  opponent  on  historical  ques- 
tions. He  had  a  knack  of  reading  up  particular  points 
and  then  biding  his  time  to  come  down  on  some  man 
who  spoke  of  them  only  from  his  general  information. 
I  only  got  the  better  of  him  on  one  or  two  occasions  : 
once  about  Nelson  and  the  Mediterranean  Fleet,  and 
once  when  he  roundly  asserted,  and  stuck  to  it,  that 


204  TORY   MEMORIES. 

the  battle  of  Salamanca  was  fought  after  the  siege  of 
Burgos.  But  he  generally  came  to  an  argument  so 
well  prepared  that  he  was  rarely  caught  tripping. 
Button  Cook  used  to  bring  us  all  the  theatrical  news, 
which  he  often  enlivened  with  some  neat  little  wit- 
ticism. Sotheby  was  our  Society  member,  and  when 
he  came  in  from  some  West -End  party,  faultlessly 
attired  in  evening  dress,  Cook  Hkened  him  to  Lord 
Glossmore  in  Money,  and  by  that  name  he  was 
known  among  us  ever  afterwards.  He  was  a  highly 
cultivated  and  accomplished  man,  and  an  article  which 
he  wrote  on  De  Quincey  in  Fraser  is  one  of  the  best 
accounts  of  that  author  that  I  am  acquainted  with, 
though  De  Quincey  is  one  of  my  books  and  I  have  read 
most  that  has  been  written  about  him,  and  have  written 
something  myself.  Sotheby  once  proposed  that  he 
should  translate  R^musat,  and  that  I  should  do  the 
political  notes.  I  wish  the  design  had  been  carried  out, 
but  it  died  away. 

Trevor,  I  should  say,  was,  next  to  Ormsby,  the  most 
prominent  member  of  the  Rambler.  His  Toryism  was 
unimpeachable,  as  became  his  ancestry.  He  was  one 
of  that  good  old  school  who  are  accustomed  to    say, 

'*  Let's   have   no   nonsense,'*    or   perhaps    *'  no   d d 

nonsense  '*  would  be  more  like  him.  In  theology  he 
was  not  deeply  read  ;  but  his  instincts  kept  him  very 
straight.  He  regarded  such  books  as  **  Essays  and 
Reviews  ''  as  an  utterly  unprofitable  waste  of  human 
ingenuity.  He  would  have  agreed  with  Dr.  Johnson 
that  ''  most  schemes  of  political  improvement  are  very 
laughable  things.'*  In  a  word,  his  philosophy  was  the 
same  as  that  of  honest  Ben  Winthrop  in  *'  Silas  Marner," 
who  said  to  Macey,  tailor  and  parish  clerk,  who  was  apt 


TORY   CLUBS.  205 

to  be  critical,  ''  Ah,  Mr.  Macey,  you  and  me  are  two 
folks.  When  I've  got  a  pot  of  good  ale  I  hke  to  swaller 
it,  and  do  my  inside  good,  'stead  o'  smelling  and  staring 
at  it  to  see  if  I  can  find  faut  wi'  the  brewing."  He 
agreed  with  the  Catechism,  though  not  altogether  satis- 
fied with  the  station  in  life  in  which  he  found  himself, 
as  he  thought  Government  treated  its  servants  rather 
scurvily.  Yet,  I  believe,  he  did  his  duty  there  as  effi- 
ciently as  if  his  pay  had  been  doubled.  He  considered 
that  his  duty  towards  himself  consisted  in  getting  as 
much  good  out  of  this  life  as  he  possibly  could — good 
meaning  with  him,  as  Emerson  says  it  means  with 
EngUshmen  in  general,  good  to  eat.  He  had  a  royal 
appetite,  and  as  it  was  quite  contrary  to  his  theory  of 
life  to  place  any  check  upon  it,  he  increased  in  bulk 
every  day.  But,  bless  you,  Trevor  did  not  care  about 
that.  I  remember  a  lady  who  sat  next  him  at  dinner 
teUing  him  she  didn't  Hke  fat  people,  and  then  nervously 
correcting  herself  :  "  Oh,  I  don't  mind  fat  men,  you 
know."  Trevor  just  looked  over  his  shoulder  at  her 
with  the  peculiar  chuckle  which  became  him  so  well, 
and  made  no  other  answer.  I  have  often  envied  men 
who  have  this  particular  gift.  It  helps  them  out  of 
many  situations,  and  often  has  all  the  effect  of  a  suc- 
cessful repartee. 

I  never  heard  of  Trevor  being  out  of  countenance 
but  once,  and  that  was  when  he  was  on  a  walking  tour 
in  Ireland  with  Ormsby.  They  arrived  late  at  a  small 
country  inn,  which  was  quite  full,  and  a  bed  was  made 
up  for  Trevor  in  the  bar.  The  next  morning,  at  break- 
fast in  the  coffee-room,  he  heard  one  man  say  to  another 
that  he  had  often  been  told  that  the  Irish  kept  their  pigs 
in  the  house,  but  he  never  knew  it  till  then.     The  fact 


2o6  TORY   MEMORIES. 

is  that  Trevor's  snore  was  something  dreadful.  I  have 
heard  Sala  say  that  it  almost  frightened  him.  Trevor, 
who  was  conscious  of  this  infirmity,  of  course  knew  what 
was  meant,  and  kept  his  eyes  steadily  fixed  on  his  plate 
till  the  subject  dropped. 

Trevor  was  as  hospitable  as  he  was  convivial,  and 
among  the  good  things  of  this  hfe  he  included  litera- 
ture. He  could  hold  his  own  in  conversation  with 
journalists  and  reviewers,  and  one  often  met  interesting 
people  in  his  rooms,  such  as  Shirley  Brooks,  Hood,  Sala, 
who  long  remained  under  the  impression  that  I  wrote  the 
"  Christian  Year,*'  Stigant  of  the  Edinburgh  Review, 
Charles  Austin  of  the  Times  ;  and  once  I  met  Sir  Squire 
and  Lady  Bancroft  at  lunch  at  his  rooms  in  St.  James's 
Street.  He  died  at  a  comparatively  early  age,  and  I 
should  say  without  an  enemy  in  the  world.  His 
sallies  were  never  personal,  and  he  was  acceptable  in 
every  class  of  society  and  among  all  sorts  and  condi- 
tions of  men.  As  a  specimen  of  his  peculiar  cynicism, 
I  may  quote  what  he  said  to  a  friend  of  mine  about  a 
mutual  acquaintance  who  was  thought  to  be  living 
rather  beyond  his  means.  ''  Pooh  !  "  said  Trevor ; 
'*  his  income  keeps  him  very  well,  and,  of  course,  he 

won't  be  such  a  d d  fool  as  not  to  die  in  debt." 

Thackeray  ought  to  have  met  Trevor.  He  would  have 
made  something  of  him.  He  often  reminded  me  of 
Lord  Steyne.  When  Mrs.  Rawdon  tells  Lord  Steyne 
that  they  have  ruined  poor  Briggs,  Rawdon  Crawley 
having  borrowed  all  her  legacy  :  ''  Ruined  her  ?  "  said 
his  lordship ;  *'  then  why  don't  you  turn  her  out  ?  " 
That  was  Trevor  all  over.  Not  that  he  would  have  done 
it.  But  such  was  his  vein.  It  was  a  kind  of  talk  highly 
relished  in  club  smoking  rooms,  whether  Whig  or  Tory. 


TORY    CLUBS.  207 

Trevor  also  had  a  good  voice,  and  was  never  un- 
willing to  oblige  the  company  with  a  song.  His  reper- 
toire was,  however,  more  racy  than  select,  and  would 
have  driven  Colonel  Newcome  out  of  the  room.  His 
ditty  was  not  always  acceptable  even  to  the  very 
catholic  tastes  which  prevailed  at  Dick's.  In  that  and 
other  things  Trevor  belonged  to  a  school  of  conviviahty 
with  whom  wit  was  wit  in  whatever  language  it  was 
clothed.  In  the  days  when  clubs  were  often  only  dining 
and  drinking  associations,  it  is  probable  that  at  an 
early  period  of  the  evening  men  ceased  to  be  very  nice 
about  their  jokes.  I  was  once  told  by  a  retired  Colonel 
who  had  mixed  in  that  kind  of  company  that  at  a  club 
in  Covent  Garden  he  once  heard  the  Chairman,  a  well- 
known  viveur,  teU  the  waiter  at  twelve  o'clock  at  night 
to  put  half  a  dozen  more  of  the  *20  port  on  the  table. 

George  Danvers  was  a  Rambler  whose  conversation 
smacked  rather  of  the  bush  and  the  gold  diggings  than 
of  the  Cave  of  Harmony  or  the  Back  Kitchen.  He  was 
an  Old  Etonian.  But  for  some  reason  or  another  he 
had  taken  to  roughing  it.  He  had  been  both  in  Australia 
and  in  California,  and  the  conditions  of  life  and  the 
maladies  to  which  men  were  exposed  in  those  golden 
regions  he  described  with  a  frankness  which  I  cannot 
venture  to  imitate.  He  got  off  a  murderer  before  a 
Yorkshire  jury  by  making  light  of  being  knocked  down, 
and  asking  the  jury  whether  it  was  not  a  thing  which 
every  gentleman  had  to  undergo  in  the  course  of  his 
life.  He  was  so  elated  with  his  success  that  he  went 
out  to  try  his  fortune  at  the  Indian  Bar.  But  he 
never  returned.  Everything  else  failing,  he  went  back 
to  Australia,  whence  he  wrote  to  say  that  his  "  ax  '* 
was  his  best  friend,  and  there,  I  believe,  he  died. 


2o8  TORY    MEMORIES. 

While  in  England  he  tried  his  hand  at  journalism 
and  wrote  some  sporting  articles  for  the  Saturday  Review ^ 
which  were  duly  licked  into  shape  by  his  friend  the  sub- 
editor. Danvers  after  a  time  began  to  kick  at  this  kind 
of  supervision,  which  he  called  ''  coming  Molly  over 
him/'  and  announced  his  intention  of  making  his  friend 
acquainted  with  his  feelings  on  the  subject.  The  sub- 
editor was  gifted  with  a  large  nose,  and  Danvers,  when 
asked  what  he  meant  to  say  to  him,  replied  :  ''I  shan't 
say  nothing.  I  shall  come  down  on  his  old  nut  in  a  way 
that'll  astonish  him."  This  gentle  intimation  that  his 
sub-editorial  friend  had  gone  too  far  was  never,  I 
think,  adopted. 

Saturday  was  the  Ramblers'  guest  night,'  when  mem- 
bers introduced  their  friends.  I  think  that  once  or  twice 
we  had  the  honour  of  Mr.  John  Morley's  company.  He 
was  then  living  in  the  Temple.  Greenwood  came  some- 
times, and  also  Dante  Rossetti,  whom  I  knew  very  well, 
and  was  always  very  glad  to  meet.  Then  we,  most  of  us, 
had  supper,  which  we  never  did  on  ordinary  week  days, 
and  now  and  then  Brandt,  who  rather  fancied  himself 
as  an  orator,  would  make  a  speech.  But  oratory  was 
not  encouraged,  and  so  much  the  better.  At  the  end 
of  the  session,  usually  about  the  middle  of  June,  we 
had  the  club  dinner,  all  dining  together,  sometimes 
at  Dick's,  sometimes  at  Cremorne,  sometimes  at  the 
Albion,  once  frequented  by  Captain  Strong. 

I  ought  to  have  made  further  mention  at  an  earlier 
page  of  Henry  Fawcett.  Before  he  went  out  to  Turkey, 
he  was  employed  by  the  Conservative  party  in  some 
capacity — I  forget  what,  and  this  appointment  was  his 
reward.  Whenever  he  revisited  England,  he  always 
turned   up   at    Dick's,  and   often  told   us    some  very 


TORY   CLUBS.  209 

interesting  things  about  the  country.  My  readers  may 
remember  two  naval  officers  being  murdered  about 
that  time  by  Albanian  shepherds.  Fawcett  said  that 
it  happened  in  this  way.  The  two  officers  were  out 
shooting,  and  thinking  they  might  be  trespassing,  they 
sought  to  make  friends  with  the  two  natives.  By  way 
of  doing  so  they  offered  them  some  ammunition.  This 
was  an  unfortunate  mistake,  and  cost  them  their  lives. 
To  offer  an  Albanian  gunpowder  or  cartridges  was  equiva- 
lent, he  said,  to  a  challenge,  and  so  the  shepherds  under- 
stood it.  Fawcett  likewise  had  a  great  deal  to  say 
of  the  capital  shooting  he  had  in  Albania,  where  he 
often  went  out  without  any  fear  of  being  molested, 
and  had  rare  sport  with  the  woodcocks. 

Some  twenty  years  after  the  club  had  breathed  its 
last,  I  invited  all  its  surviving  members  to  dinner  at  my 
own  house,  and  we  numbered  as  many  as  fourteen.  By 
that  time  we  had  most  of  us  cast  off  all  traces  of 
Bohemia,  and  settled  down  into  sober,  respectable 
citizens.  Among  the  missing  faces  were  some  of  the 
best-known  and  most  popular  members  of  the  club — 
Brandt,  Sotheby,  Lomer,  Conington,  and  others  ;  for 
twenty  years  is  as  bad  as  a  charge  of  grape-shot  fired 
into  a  group  of  friends.  But  we  soon  found  ourselves 
back,  as  it  were,  in  the  old  room  at  Dick's,  and  almost 
seemed  to  listen  again  to  the  silent  voices.  Let  nobody 
suppose,  however,  that  there  was  any  sadness  or  melan- 
choly in  the  meeting.  On  the  contrary,  we  had  a  very 
joyous  evening,  compared  the  Toryism  of  Lord  Salis- 
bury with  the  Toryism  of  Lord  Palmerston,  and  agreed 
that  Lord  Beaconsfield  had  a  touch  of  both  in  his  com- 
position. The  old  Irish  members  had  disappeared,  or 
we  should  have  had  some  glowing  denunciation  of 
o 


210  TORY   MEMORIES. 

Gladstone.  But  Trevor  was  there,  a  cynical  epicure, 
and  Charles,  whose  political  allegiance  never  faltered, 
and  whose  humorous  smile  and  shrewd  glance  were  as 
bright  and  as  keen  as  ever.  And  Marten  came,  and 
Durell,  the  warmest  of  friends  and  the  most  implacable 
of  colloquial  antagonists.  Stokes  and  Turner  were  in 
India,  Griffiths  was  at  the  Cape. 

We  dissected  the  Conservative  working  man,  at 
that  time  a  much-talked-of  personage.  George  Eliot 
and  Jane  Austen,  TroUope  and  Thackeray,  Macaulay 
and  Froude  had  their  respective  partisans,  and  we  did 
not  separate  till  an  hour  worthy  of  the  Ramblers. 
Since  that  time  many  more  have  been  taken,  and  I 
don't  think  it  would  be  possible  to  get  up  such  a  dinner 
now.  Still,  as  Lord  Beaconsfield  said,  reminiscences 
are  a  great  comfort.  In  fact,  one  ought  to  lay  them 
down  in  one's  youth,  to  be  enjoyed  in  our  old  age.  But 
this  means  keeping  a  diary  :  a  thing  which  I  could  never 
bring  myself  to  do.  I  shall  not  therefore  have  to 
endure  the  oft-repeated  sarcasm  at  the  expense  of  such 
memories  which  is  conveyed  in  the  words,  "  fine  old 
crusted." 

The  Canning  Club,  of  which  a  branch,  I  believe,  still 
exists  at  Oxford,  was  founded  about  the  year  1870, 
shortly  after  the  decease  of  the  Rambler.  This  was  a 
strictly  Tory  club.  It  was  supposed  to  represent  that 
section  of  the  Tories  who  heartily  approved  of  the  Reform 
Bill  of  1867  and  might  be  considered  the  more  liberal 
wing  of  the  party.  It  was  hoped  that  it  might  form 
the  nucleus  of  a  club  which  should  attract  the  rising 
generation  of  Tories,  and  was  started,  as  I  understood, 
with  the   approval  of  Lord   Beaconsfield.     Among  its 


TORY   CLUBS.  2ir 

original  members  were  Lord  Rowton,  or  Montagu 
Corry  as  he  was  then,  George  Russell,  Edward  Pember, 
Ormsby,  and  myself.  What  was  wanted  to  make  it 
a  success  in  London  was  an  organising  chief,  which  we 
had  not  got.  Four  out  of  the  five  I  have  mentioned 
were  all  busy  men,  and  could  not  spare  the  time  that 
was  necessary ;  and  Russell,  who  might  have  had 
sufficient  leisure,  was  not  the  man  to  devote  himself 
to  business  unless  he  was  obliged. 

The  Canning  was,  I  think,  in  some  respects  a  mis- 
nomer ;   for  Canning  was  resolutely  opposed  to  a  demo- 
cratic suffrage,  while    the  members    of  the  club  were 
most  of  them  equally  hostile  to  Continental  Liberalism. 
However,  the  name  served  well  enough  ;   but  the  club, 
in  London  at  all  events,  did  not  take  on.     We  had  some 
very  pleasant  meetings  at  the  old  Gray's   Inn  Coffee 
House,  one  of  the  best  of  the  old  London  taverns,  and 
now,  alas  !  with  the  rest  of  its  vinous  brethren,  a  memory 
only.     We  dined  there  two  or  three  times  with  Russell 
in  the  chair,  and  devised  various  schemes  for  reorganis- 
ing the  Tory  party  after  the  great  defeat  of  1868.    But 
they  ended  in   talk.     The  port   wine  was  undeniable. 
George  Russell  and  Jack  Ormsby  were  enough  by  them- 
selves to  keep  any  table  alive,  and  Pember,  who  might 
then  have  been  called,  in  Macaulay's  words,  ''  a  stern, 
unbending  Tory,''  used  to  describe  his  creed  in  much  the 
same  terms  as  Glover  would  have  used  in  similar  circum- 
stances :    *'  Keep  all  you've  got."     That  was  Toryism. 
He  modified  these  opinions  considerably  as  time  went  on, 
and  I  think  eventually  became  a  member  of  the  Eighty 
Club.      But   if   I   wrong  him   I   ask  his  pardon.     The 
London    Canning   was   never   formally   dissolved.     But 
we  were  never  numerous  enough  to  give  it  any  chance  of 


212  TORY   MEMORIES. 

permanence.  Members  ceased  to  attend,  and  it  gradually- 
dwindled  away,  though  some  ten  years  ago  I  remember 
Pember  saying  that  he  supposed  it  was  then  still  in 
existence. 

The  Cecil  Club  had  better  luck.  It  was  founded 
about  twenty  years  ago,  and  it  meets  every  Tuesday 
night  during  the  session  of  Parliament.  This  is  an  ex- 
cellent plan  ;  then  the  latest  ideas  of  the  political  situa- 
tion and  the  latest  views  of  the  Conservative  leaders 
are  circulated  through  a  large  circle  of  younger  politicians, 
and  by  them  again  passed  on  through  other  strata  of 
society.  In  this  way  a  kind  of  freemasonry  is  estab- 
lished among  the  members  of  a  political  party,  than 
which  nothing  can  be  more  useful  in  promoting  united 
action.  There  is  a  club  dinner  once  a  month,  and  some 
well-known  public  man  is  usually  invited  to  take  the 
chair  on  these  occasions.  I  have  not  been  a  regular 
attendant  at  these  dinners  ;  but  I  have  seen  Mr.  Balfour 
in  the  chair,  and  the  Marquis  of  Bath,  and  Lord 
Colchester,  and  I  believe  that  both  the  late  Lord 
Goschen  and  Lord  Ashbourne  have  been  kind  enough  to 
preside. 

I  myself  have  had  the  honour  of  occupying  the 
vice-chair  more  than  once.  When  Lord  Colchester 
was  in  the  chair,  I  had  an  opportunity  of  asking 
him  a  question  to  which  I  have  long  wanted  to  get 
an  answer.  In  his  father^s  diary  it  is  stated  that 
when  Sir  Henry  Halford — I  mean  the  physician — knew 
of  the  duel  between  the  Duke  of  Wellington  and  Lord 
Winchilsea,  he  quoted  the  words  attributed  to  Augustus 
when  challenged  to  single  combat  by  Antony  : 

Quaerat  certamen  cui  nil  nisi  vita  superstes : 
Subdita  cui  cedit  Roma,  cavere  meum  est. 


TORY    CLUBS.  213 

But  his  Lordship  could  not  satisfy  my  curiosity  as 
to  where  these  hnes  can  be  found,  nor  have  I  as  yet 
found  anyone  who  could. 

I  once  sat  next  to  Mr.  Saintsbury  at  the  Cecil.  His 
*'  Life  of  Lord  Derby ''  in  the  '*  Queen's  Prime  Ministers  '* 
series  had  not  long  been  pubHshed,  and  as  in  it  there 
were  frequent  references  to  myself,  and  my  own  bio- 
graphy of  that  statesman,  we  had  some  very  interesting 
talk.  He  had  called  in  question  a  statement  of  mine 
to  the  effect  that  an  indiscreet  speech  of  Lord  Derby's 
before  the  General  Election  of  1865  lost  him  the  Roman 
Catholic  vote.  I  now  had  an  opportunity  of  pointing 
out  to  him  that  he  had  mistaken  the  particular  speech 
to  which  I  referred,  and  that,  as  to  the  effect  on  the 
elections,  I  had  my  information  from  Mr.  Disraeli  him- 
self. Mr.  Saintsbury  went  into  the  question  with  great 
good  humour ;  but  I  forget  how  it  ended — whether  he 
turned  the  tables  upon  me,  or  whether  he  did  not. 

The  plan  of  the  Junior  Carlton  was  suggested  to 
Mr.  Disraeli  by  Colonel  Taylor  in  1863,  and  at  page  302 
of  the  second  volume  of  '*  Memoirs  of  an  Ex-Minister  ' ' 
we  find  a  letter  from  Mr.  Disraeli  to  Lord  Malmesbury, 
pointing  out  to  him  that  a  new  club  was  required,  to 
be  *' a  central  point  for  country  solicitors,  land  agents, 
etc.,  who  are  winning  and  are  to  win  our  elections.'' 
The  Carlton  and  the  Conservative  Clubs  were  so  full 
that  many  men  had  a  long  time  to  wait  for  admission 
to  them,  and  neither  of  them  provided  accommodation 
for  exactly  the  class  of  men  described  by  Colonel  Taylor. 
The  Junior  Carlton  and  St.  Stephen's  are  Tory  clubs 
of  quite  a  different  order  from  those  already  noticed. 
The  Junior  Carlton  has,  I  imagine,  quite  answered  its 
purpose  as  described  in  Mr.  Disraeli's  letter  ;     but  the 


TORY   CLUBS.  215 

he  would  fain  shirk  if  he  could.  The  visitor's  counten- 
ance would  display  equally  varying  emotions,  and  I 
used  to  amuse  myself  by  conjecturing  on  what  business 
they  had  come.  I  thought  of  the  many  disappoint- 
ments, the  many  weary  hours  of  waiting,  the  many 
hopes  deferred  which  that  vestibule  must  have  wit- 
nessed. I  have  not  been  there  lately,  but  I  am  told 
that  I  should  see  rather  a  change  in  the  personal  element 
if  I  went  there  now. 


214  TORY   MEMORIES. 

Canning  and  the  Cecil  and  the  Rambler  were  meant  to 
bring  young  men  together,  and  to  strengthen  political 
principles  by  social  ties.  For  this  reason,  although  the 
Rambler  was  practically  a  Tory  club,  its  doors  were  open 
to  everybody — and  as  many  converts  are  made,  perhaps, 
by  good  fellowship  as  by  either  reading  or  reasoning. 
I  was  a  member  of  St.  Stephen's  myself,  and  to  a  jour- 
nalist it  was  extremely  useful.  When  I  ceased  doing 
regular  work  I  left  the  club,  not  wanting  two  ;  but  down 
to  that  time  I  went  there  nearly  every  afternoon,  as 
it  was  a  good  deal  frequented  by  members  of  both 
Houses,  being  just  at  the  corner  of  the  Victoria  Embank- 
ment by  Westminster  Bridge.  Here  I  used  often  to 
see  the  late  Lord  Stanhope,  Cecil  Raikes,  Lord  Rowton, 
Lord  Ashbourne,  and  Lord  Randolph  Churchill ;  and 
thus  I  was  sometimes  enabled  to  write  the  night's  leader 
without  having  to  go  down  to  the  Standard  office  for  the 
latest  intelligence. 

Mr.  Mudford  was  then  editor  of  the  Standard,  and 
I  always  found  members  very  ready  to  tell  me  anything 
that  was  worth  knowing.  From  St.  Stephen's  it  was 
a  short  step  across  to  the  lobby  of  the  House,  and  thither 
I  often  went,  not  merely  for  the  sake  of  seeing  members 
or  gleaning  intelligence,  but  also  in  order  to  watch 
the  little  groups  collected  there,  and  the  stream  of 
human  life  passing  backwards  and  forwards  between  the 
inner  and  the  outer  lobby.  I  used  to  be  particularly 
interested  in  what  I  took  to  be  meetings  between 
members  and  one  or  more  of  their  constituents.  It  was 
good  to  note  their  countenances  :  on  the  member's 
would  be  sometimes  a  look  of  impatience,  sometimes  of 
real  or  assumed  dehght,  sometimes  of  the  courage  of 
despair  with  which  a  man  faces  an  irksome  duty  that 


TORY   CLUBS.  215 

he  would  fain  shirk  if  he  could.  The  visitor's  counten- 
ance would  display  equally  varpng  emotions,  and  I 
used  to  amuse  myself  by  conjecturing  on  what  business 
they  had  come.  I  thought  of  the  many  disappoint- 
ments, the  many  weary  hours  of  waiting,  the  many 
hopes  deferred  which  that  vestibule  must  have  wit- 
nessed. I  have  not  been  there  lately,  but  I  am  told 
that  I  should  see  rather  a  change  in  the  personal  element 
if  I  went  there  now. 


CHAPTER    XV. 

TORY   JOURNALISM   AND   LITERATURE. 

The  Press — The  Seeleys,  Father  and  Son — The  New  Quarterly — A  Sub- 
sidy from  the  Porte — Musurus  Pasha — The  Pall  Mall  Gazette 
Founded — Mr.  Frederick  Greenwood — The  County  Government 
Bill— The  Pall  Mall  StafE— A  Wink  from  an  Archdeacon— The 
Yorkshire  Post :  a  Start  under  Difficulties — Joining  the  StafE  of  the 
Standard — Writing  Leaders  by  Snatches — System  of  Payment — In- 
vited to  Join  the  Times  Stafi — Mr.  Mudford — Mr.  Curtis — The 
Standard  Changes  Hands — Contributions  to  the  Quarterly  Review — 
— Its  Editors — Founding  of  the  National  Review — Articles  in  the 
Fortnightly  and  in  the  Nineteenth  Century — Sir  James  Knowles — 
Fraser's  and  Blackwood's — Lord  Edmond  Fitzmaurice  and  Junius 
— Mr.  Sidney  Low  and  Mr.  Jeyes — Mr.  William  Blackwood. 

My  memory,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  extends  a  long  way 
backwards,  into  the  journalism  of  the  early  'sixties  and 
a  little  further.  I  have  already  mentioned  my  connec- 
tion with  the  Press  newspaper,  and  what  I  owed  to  Mr. 
Coulton,  its  editor,  when  I  first  joined  it.  But  I  have 
a  little  more  to  say  about  its  subsequent  history  after 
Mr.  Coulton's  death.  The  paper  was  carried  on,  as 
before,  by  the  leaders  of  the  party,  being  edited  by  Mr. 
Haydon,  a  son  of  the  painter.  During  this  period,  Mr. 
Lucas,  who  had  been  editor  before  Coulton,  used  to 
send  us  occasional  articles,  and  every  now  and  then 
some  witty  verses.  Another  member  of  the  original 
staff  was  Madden,  who  had  been  on  the  Morning 
Chronicle,  I  think,  when  Black  was  editor.  But  we 
depended  chiefly  on  Shirley  Brooks  for  our  humorous 
column,   which  was   sometimes   very  good,   sometimes 

216 


TORY    JOURNALISM    AND    LITERATURE.    217 

mediocre,  and  often,  I  am  afraid,  for  lack  of  material, 
rather  poor.  The  best  of  the  articles  were  republished 
afterwards  in  a  little  volume  called  the  '*  Coalition 
Guide.*'  During  the  Indian  Mutiny  the  articles  attack- 
ing the  old  East  India  Company  in  no  measured  terms 
were  written,  I  believe,  by  Colonel  Outram. 

The  year  following  Coulton's  death  the  Press  was 
sold  to  Mr.  Newdegate,  who  naturally  imparted  a  strong 
Protestant  flavour  to  it.  It  was  edited  at  first  by  Mr. 
Seeley,  the  publisher,  a  very  clever  old  gentleman  who 
had  been  a  leader-writer  on  the  Times  in  his  day.  I  still 
continued  on  the  paper  writing  reviews  and  miscellane- 
ous articles  and  acting  also  for  a  time  as  sub-editor.  I 
used  to  find  old  Mr.  Seeley  a  very  amusing  companion 
in  the  editor's  room,  and  it  was  there  that  I  made 
acquaintance  with  his  distinguished  son,  John  Seeley, 
who  now  began  to  write  a  good  deal  for  the  paper,  both 
literary  and  poHtical  articles.  Mr.  Newdegate  himself 
often  came  to  the  office,  and  used  to  chat  with  me  about 
Leicestershire.  He  had  often  been  to  Wistow  with  the 
hounds,  he  said,  and  knew  the  Halford  family.  I  re- 
member, too,  that  we  once  had  a  visit  from  a  man  whom 
I  was  glad  to  see,  namely  Mr.  Stapleton,  who  had  been 
Canning's  private  secretary,  and  wrote  the  *'  Life  of 
Canning."  He  did  not  tell  us  anything  in  particular ; 
but  it  was  something,  I  thought,  to  have  shaken  hands 
with  one  who  had  been  so  near  the  great  statesman 
whose  early  death  was  almost  as  heavy  a  blow  to  the 
Tory  party  as  Mr.  Pitt's. 

Mr.  Seeley  did  not  continue  to  edit  the  paper  very 
long.  After  him  came  Mr.  Creed,  who  in  turn  was  fol- 
lowed by  Mr.  Paterson,  whose  management  was  distin- 
guished by  some  articles  on  Mr.  Lowe's  once  celebrated 


2i8  TORY   MEMORIES. 

*'  Revised  Code ''  which  attracted  a  good  deal  of  atten- 
tion at  the  time  and  were  thought  to  have  destroyed  it. 
Soon  after  this  my  own  connection  with  the  paper  came 
to  an  end.  It  Hngered  on  for  some  Httle  time,  and 
finally  was  amalgamated  with  the  5^.  James's  Chronicle, 
It  was  sad  to  compare  its  end  with  the  beginning.  It 
had  been  intended  originally  to  be  only  a  temporary 
publication,  on  the  lines  of  the  Anti-Jacobin,  its  object 
being  to  write  down  the  Coalition,  which  had  provoked, 
of  course,  the  bitter  hostility  of  Mr.  Disraeli.  As  long 
as  he  continued  to  preside  over  its  management,  it  kept 
up  its  character,  and  though  many  thought  it  too  per- 
sonal, none  ever  called  it  dull.  But  it  is  very  difficult 
to  keep  up  a  publication  of  this  kind  at  its  original  level. 
The  Anti-Jacobin  would  have  languished  had  it  lived 
much  longer ;  and  other  periodicals  could  be  named 
which,  starting  with  exceptional  brilliancy,  have  sub- 
sided by  degrees  to  the  level  of  mediocrity. 

While  the  Press  was  still  in  existence,  I  had  some 
interesting  and  amusing  experiences  of  journalism  of 
quite  a  different  character,  and  though  my  work  was 
partially  in  support  of  a  nominally  Whig  minister,  it 
represented  a  Tory  policy,  which  has  not  even  yet  accom- 
plished its  full  task.  At  that  time,  while  the  remem- 
brance of  the  Crimean  War  was  fresh  in  the  national 
mind,  and  English  sympathies  with  Turkey  were  still 
warm,  Mr.  Haydon,  whom  I  have  already  mentioned, 
had  started  a  periodical  with  the  title  of  the  New 
Quarterly,  which  was  naturally  rather  resented  by  Mr. 
Murray.  However,  that  is  nothing  to  the  present  pur- 
pose. The  New  Quarterly  was  specially  devoted  to  the 
interests  of  Turkey,  then  in  some  trouble  about  the 
Danubian  Principalities,  Moldavia,  Wallachia,  and  like- 


TORY   JOURNALISM   AND    LITERATURE.    219 

wise  Servia.  Haydon  asked  me  to  write  articles  for  him 
on  this  subject,  and  used  to  come  to  my  chambers  in 
Gray's  Inn  with  a  bundle  of  pencil  notes,  which  it  was 
my  business  to  reduce  into  the  shape  of  an  article.  I 
did  not  know  at  the  time  where  they  came  from  ;  but 
when  Haydon  left  the  Press  and  was  made  an  Inspector 
of  Factories,  he  had  to  leave  London,  and  it  became 
necessary  either  to  abandon  the  New  Quarterly  or  to  put 
somebody  else  in  communication  with  the  Excellent 
personage  from  whom  he  drew  his  information.  He 
accordingly  handed  the  job  over  to  myself.  The  pub- 
lication had  a  subsidy  from  the  Turkish  Government 
of  ;f200  a  year,  and  we  were  to  divide  the  plunder. 

In  due  course  I  was  presented  to  his  Excellency  the 
Turkish  Ambassador,  Musurus  Pasha,  and  it  was  settled 
that  I  should  visit  him  when  required,  and  write  such 
articles  as  he  wished  to  have  published.  Of  course,  he 
was  not  satisfied  with  merely  an  article  once  a  quarter, 
and  it  was  arranged  with  Mr.  Borthwick,  then  the 
Editor  of  the  Morning  Post,  and  now  Lord  Glenesk,  that 
that  paper  would  take  leading  articles  from  me  in  support 
of  the  Turkish  policy  of  Lord  Palmerston.  I  can't  exactly 
say  how  often  I  was  required  to  write — sometimes  two 
or  three  times  a  week — sometimes,  perhaps,  not  for  a 
month.  But  as  I  was  paid  for  each  article  by  the  Post, 
in  addition  to  my  share  of  the  subsidy,  I  did  pretty  well. 
But  without  these  honoraria  I  should  have  been  more 
than  half  repaid  by  my  interviews  with  Musurus,  and 
the  singularly  humorous  and  vivacious  style  in  which 
his  instructions  were  communicated.  He  used  to  sit 
cross-legged  on  his  sofa  and  dictate  his  views  with  a 
volubility  which  was  sometimes  perplexing,  and  mingled 
with  jokes  which  were  always  good  ones.     He  was,  I 


220  TORY   MEMORIES, 

think,  most  amusing  when  at  a  loss  for  the  particular 
English  word  he  wanted,  for  he  neither  spoke  English 
fluently  nor  pronounced  it  correctly.  He  often  had  to 
fall  back  upon  his  French,  and  then  I  was  mostly  able 
to  help  him  to  the  word  he  wanted.  I  could  hardly 
keep  my  countenance  when  he  pronounced  '*  blood- 
shed "  ''  brodspread."  He  was  always  in  good  humour, 
and  seemed,  in  talking  to  me  at  least,  to  treat  politics 
rather  as  a  joke.  He  told  me  a  great  deal,  however, 
which  I  was  very  glad  to  know,  and  which  I  have  found 
very  useful  since. 

Scarcely  was  the  Press  in  its  grave  when  another 
paper  sprang  into  existence,  which  was  destined  to 
be  a  great  success.  This  was  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette, 
founded  in  the  year  1865  by  the  late  Mr.  George  Smith, 
but  mainly  indebted  for  the  brilliant  career  which 
awaited  it  to  Mr.  Frederick  Greenwood,  who  con- 
tinued to  edit  it  down  to  the  fall  of  Lord  Beaconsfield's 
Government  in  1880.  I  remember  Greenwood  coming 
to  my  chambers  to  talk  about  it.  But  I  had  nothing 
whatever  to  do  with  its  birth,  or  management,  and  was 
at  first  only  a  very  occasional  contributor,  for  the  Pall 
Mall  Gazette  did  not  begin  as  an  avowed  Tory  paper. 
On  the  contrary,  if  obliged  to  take  a  name,  it  would  have 
called  itself  Liberal.  It  did  not  support  Lord  Derby's 
Reform  Bill  in  1867,  nor,  as  far  as  I  can  remember,  did 
it  take  any  decided  line  about  either  the  Irish  Church 
Bill  or  the  Irish  Land  Bill.  But  it  showed  no  mercy  to 
the  military  and  naval  administration  of  the  Liberal 
Government,  and  on  the  never-forgotten  questions  of 
Sir  Spencer  Robinson  and  the  Ewelme  Rectory  the 
Pall  Mall  Gazette  made  its  teeth  meet  in  the  eminent 
offenders. 


TORY  JOURNALISM  AND  LITERATURE.    221 

The  Pall  Mall,  like  so  many  other  journals,  was  best 
when  it  was  aggressive.  It  supported  the  general  prin- 
ciples of  Lord  Beaconsfield's  Eastern  policy  to  the  last, 
but  found  fault  with  the  want  of  vigour  displayed  in 
giving  effect  to  them.  It  supported  the  Minister, 
but  not  the  Cabinet;  and  to  such  an  extent  did 
it  carry  its  strictures  upon  the  Government  in  the 
late  'seventies,  that  I  remember  hearing  it  said  in  a 
Tory  country  house  that  the  Pall  Mall  had  gone  mad. 
I  had  nothing  to  do  with  all  this.  I  continued  to  write 
reviews  and  miscellaneous  articles  for  the  paper ;  but 
Greenwood  and  myself  did  not  thoroughly  agree  upon 
poHtical  questions  till  after  the  estabhshment  of  the 
5^.  James's  Gazette,  though  even  then  I  did  not  do 
much  political  work  for  him.  He  favoured  the  Fourth 
Party,  and  used  to  repeat  their  jokes  at  the  expense  of 
Sir  Stafford  Northcote,  and  ridicule  his  gestures  and 
attitudes,  in  a  manner  which  he  himself  has  probably 
forgotten  by  this  time. 

At  a  later  date  I  was  able  to  join  with  Greenwood 
in  attacking  a  Tory  Government,  for  though  as  a  party 
man  I  could  digest  a  good  deal,  there  were  one  or  two 
cherished  principles  at  the  bottom  of  my  heart  with 
which  my  conscience  would  suffer  no  tampering.  One 
was  the  maintenance  of  what  Lord  Beaconsfield  used  to 
call  our  ''territorial  constitution.'*  I  thought,  and 
think  still,  that  the  landed  proprietors  in  every  English 
county  make  the  best  magistrates,  and  should  of  right 
have  in  their  hands  the  conduct  of  all  county  business. 
I  never  liked  the  Prisons  Bill  brought  in  by  Lord 
Beaconsfield's  Government.  But  when  Lord  Salisbury 
brought  in  his  County  Government  Bill  my  party  loyalty 
collapsed.     On  this   question  Greenwood   quite  agreed 


222  TORY   MEMORIES. 

with  me,  and  I  wrote  a  succession  of  articles  in  the 
St,  James's  Gazette  showing  that  the  Bill  was  the  wanton 
sacrifice  of  an  excellent  working  system  on  the  shrine 
of  an  abstract  idea,  a  thing  which  had  generally  been 
thought  repugnant  to  the  EngHsh  temperament.  I 
pointed  out  that  the  Municipal  Reform  Act  of  1834  ^^^ 
due  to  the  gross  abuses,  jobbery,  and  corruption  proved 
against  the  old  system  ;  and  that  not  a  single  charge  of 
any  kind  was  ever  brought  against  the  county  magistrates 
at  Quarter  Sessions,  a  regimen  which  combined  the  three 
virtues  of  economy,  honesty,  and  efficiency.  Where 
is  the  economy  now  ?  Greenwood  thoroughly  agreed 
with  these  views,  and  I  enjoyed  writing  those  articles 
immensely. 

Through  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  I  came  to  know  Fitz- 
James  Stephen,  who  at  one  time  was  a  pillar  of  the 
journal ;  and  my  old  friend,  James  Hannay,  was  enticed 
from  Edinburgh  to  London  by  the  promise  of  ;£6oo  a 
year  on  the  new  journal.  He  had  better,  I  think,  have 
stayed  where  he  was.  But  with  Stephen,  who,  I  have 
been  told,  made  more  by  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  than  he 
ever  made  at  the  Bar;  with  Hannay,  whose  witty 
articles  relieved  the  more  serious  columns  ;  with  Traill, 
who  joined  a  little  later ;  and  with  Jefferies,  who  wrote 
'*  The  Gamekeeper  at  Home,"  Greenwood  was  well  set 
up ;  and  with  his  excellent  judgment — for  he  was  a 
born  editor — success  was  a  certainty.  The  well-known 
articles  by  the  '*  Casual  '*  gave  the  paper  a  filhp  in 
its  early  days,  no  doubt ;  but  it  would  have  made  its 
way  without  Mr.  James  Greenwood's  experiences,  I 
feel  sure. 

While  the  Pall  Mall  remained  in  Mr.  Smith's  hands 
we  used  to  have  a  grand  dinner  every  year  at  Green- 


TORY  JOURNALISM  AND  LITERATURE.    223 

wich,  on  the  same  scale  as  the  Saturday  Review  dinner, 
at  which  I  was  sometimes  present ;  but  afterwards,  when 
the  paper  fell  under  other  management,  and  became 
a  Liberal  organ,  Mr.  Greenwood,  with  all  his  old  staff, 
retired  and  started  the  St.  James's  Gazette,  and  then 
we  used  to  have  annual  dinners  of  a  different  descrip- 
tion, to  which  the  printing  staff  were  invited,  and  at 
which  contributors  were  expected  to  make  speeches. 

Greenwood  did  not  always  get  on  well  with  his  con- 
tributors. He  fell  out  with  James  Hannay,  though 
perhaps  that  was  rather  Hannay's  fault  than  his  own  ; 
and  also  with  Traill,  who  for  a  long  time  had  been  his 
right-hand  man,  and  although  in  this  particular  case  I 
think  Greenwood  was  in  the  right,  another  man  perhaps 
might  have  softened  things  down  a  little,  and  avoided 
a  complete  rupture.  I  never  knew  exactly  why  he  gave 
up  the  St.  James's  Gazette,  but  I  believe  that  it  was 
owing  to  some  misunderstanding  with  one  of  its  prin- 
cipal supporters. 

I  myself  always  got  on  very  well  with  him.  I  recog- 
nised his  great  ability  as  an  editor,  and  never  objected 
to  his  amendments,  or  resented  his  refusal  of  an  article. 
In  discussing  a  subject  with  him  beforehand,  you  were 
sure  of  being  met  with  sound  judgment  and  a  nice  ap- 
preciation of  those  shades  of  difference  which  make  an 
article  acceptable  or  the  reverse  to  any  particular  jour- 
nal. When  he  started  the  Anti- Jacobin  I  continued  to 
write  for  him  ;  but  after  the  stoppage  of  that  well- 
intentioned  Tory  effort,  I  almost  lost  sight  of  him. 
With  him  and  his  two  daughters,  while  they  lived  in 
London,  we  were  on  visiting  terms.  They  used  to  dine 
with  us  and  we  with  them.  In  those  days  he  was 
a  very   good    talker,   and    was    much    better    read    in 


224  TORY   MEMORIES. 

English  literature  than  many  people  gave  him  credit 
for.  Besides  this,  he  had  seen  and  known  so  many 
famous  and  interesting  persons,  that  his  conversation 
never  lacked  colour.  I  remember  very  well  dining  at 
his  house  in  Kensington  nearly  twenty  years  ago, 
when  we  remained  in  the  dining-room  after  the  Miss 
Greenwoods  had  retired.  The  other  guests,  who  were 
all  men,  gradually  dropped  off  one  by  one,  till  Green- 
wood, Sutherland  Edwards,  and  myself  were  the  only 
three  left.  We  smoked  and  drank  whisky-and-soda 
in  moderation  ;  but  the  conversation  was  so  absorbing 
that  we  sat  on  and  on  without  giving  a  thought  to 
the  time,  till  on  going  out  at  the  hall  door,  Edwards 
and  myself  found  it  was  broad  daylight  and  five  o'clock 
in  the  morning. 

It  was  in  the  'sixties,  somewhere  about  the  time  that 
the  Pall  Mall  was  launched,  that  Archdeacon  Denison 
brought  out  a  weekly  paper  styled  the  Church  and  State 
RevieWy  to  which  I  was  invited  to  contribute.  He  has 
given  an  account  of  it  in  his  ''  Notes  of  My  Life."  I 
was  glad  to  serve  under  him.  It  was  a  pleasure  to  be 
in  his  company.  He  was  a  very  handsome  man,  tall, 
and  with  a  stately  presence,  but  with  a  humorous  twinkle 
in  his  eye  withal,  which  robbed  his  remarks  on  political 
or  ecclesiastical  opponents  of  all  their  bitterness.  He 
was  always  dignified,  but  never  stiff,  and  though  my 
readers  may  think  it  a  vainglorious  boast,  I  can  assure 
them  it  is  strictly  true  that  he  once  winked  at  me.  As 
Short,  in  ''  The  Old  Curiosity  Shop,"  said  when  little 
Nell  caUed  him  '^  Father,"  '^  I  thought  I  should  ha' 
bust." 

To  be  winked  at  by  an  Archdeacon,  and  such  an 
Archdeacon  too,  more  than  repaid  my  Tory  devotion  to 


TORY  JOURNALISM  AND  LITERATURE.    225 

the  Church.  Don't  tell  me  that  a  nod  is  as  good  as  a 
wink.  I  may  have  thought  so  once  ;  but  I  have  known 
better  ever  since  that  memorable  day  when  I  parted 
from  the  Archdeacon  in  Palace  Yard. 

In  the  year  1866  it  was  determined  to  start  a  Conser- 
vative daily  at  Leeds.  I  think  the  projector  applied 
to  Hamber,  who  was  then  editor  of  the  Standard,  to 
recommend  someone  to  undertake  the  management  of 
the  new  paper.  He  mentioned  it  to  me,  and,  without 
engaging  to  take  the  editorship,  I  said  I  would  go  down 
to  Leeds  and  see  how  matters  stood.  I  found  the 
committee  which  had  been  appointed  for  the  purpose 
to  consist  of  very  pleasant,  hospitable  gentlemen,  and  I 
agreed  to  stay  and  help  in  the  preliminary  labours, 
neither  few  nor  easy,  incidental  to  the  issue  of  a  new 
daily  paper.  I  found  the  shrewd  Yorkshiremen  with 
whom  I  had  to  deal  thoroughly  Hberal  in  money  matters, 
most  courteous  and  friendly  in  private,  but  quite  dis- 
posed to  get  full  value  for  their  outlay,  and  not  always, 
for  want  of  experience,  quite  able  to  appreciate  the 
difficulties  with  which  I  had  to  contend. 

My  principal  work  was  the  formation  of  an  editorial 
staff,  and  as  the  materials  for  it  did  not  exist,  or  only 
to  a  limited  extent,  upon  the  spot,  they  had  to  be  looked 
for  in  London.  I  could  not  be  in  two  places  at  once,  and 
nobody  knows  better  than  the  editor  of  a  daily  paper 
how  necessary  it  is  to  make  arrangements  with  writers 
or  others  who  are  to  be  permanent  members  of  the  staff, 
by  personal  interviews  and  not  by  letter.  During  my 
flying  visit  to  London  I  did  the  best  I  could.  I  secured 
them  a  capital  sporting  correspondent  in  Mr.  Ashley,  the 
"  Asmodeus  ''  of  the  Standard.  I  got  them,  instead  of 
myself,  a  resident  editor,  who  had  considerable  experi- 
p 


226  TORY   MEMORIES, 

ence  in  provincial  journalism,  who  was  well  read  in 
Parliamentary  history,  an  Oxford  man,  and  a  scholar 
who  could  write  in  a  popular  as  well  as  a  forcible  style. 
I  engaged  two  leader  writers  for  them  in  London  :  one 
who  already  was,  and  one  who  was  soon  to  be  among  the 
foremost  journalists  in  London ;  and  I  still  had  to  find 
some  competent  man  to  fill  the  place  of  London  cor- 
respondent, to  which  great  importance  was  attached 
by  the  Leeds  Committee.  I  tried  in  various  quarters. 
But  there  was  always  a  screw  loose.  Sometimes  the 
would-be  correspondent  stood  out  for  outrageously 
high  terms  ;  sometimes  I  had  my  doubts  whether  he  was 
in  a  position  to  secure  the  kind  of  information  which  a 
London  correspondent  is  expected  to  supply.  The  time 
was  growing  short,  and  at  last  I  had  to  do  it  myself.  The 
final  arrangement,  then,  when  I  returned  to  town  to 
take  charge  of  the  London  department,  was  that  I  should 
supply  two  London  letters  and  two  leaders  a  week ; 
that  James  Hannay  should  supply  one  leader  and 
H.  D.  Traill  another.  Two  were  to  be  written  in  the 
office  at  Leeds.  I  forgot  to  mention  that  I  also  found 
a  name  for  the  paper,  and  christened  it  the  Yorkshire 
Post, 

When  I  left  Leeds  a  fortnight  before  the  first  number 
appeared  everything  seemed  to  be  settled.  My  old 
Oxford  friend,  who  had  taken  the  editorship,  did  not 
doubt  that  he  could  carry  out  the  part  assigned  to 
himself.  Hannay  and  Traill  I  equally  believed  that 
I  could  trust.  The  only  weak  point  in  the  arrangement 
seemed  to  me  to  be  the  London  letter,  which  I  had 
been  obliged  to  take  upon  myself.  It  was  work  which 
I  disUked  very  much,  and  for  which  my  tastes  and  habits 
did  not  at  all  qualify  me.     The  London  correspondent 


TORY  JOURNALISM  AND  LITERATURE.    227 

must  be  a  man  who  is  both  able  and  wiUing  to  spend 
his  days  and  nights  in  the  collection  of  social  gossip, 
political  rumours,   literary   intelligence,   and   anecdotes 
appertaining  to  all  three.     He  must  waylay  Members  in 
the    Lobby   and   buttonhole   likely   informants    at   his 
club,   or  wherever  else  he  can  find  them  ;    have  the 
entree  to  fashionable  drawing-rooms,  and  be  intimate 
with  actors  and  actresses.     If  he  does  not  possess  oppor- 
tunities for  acquiring  the  valuable  information  which  is 
so  grateful  to  provincial  palates,  he  must  at  least  be 
believed  to  possess  them,  and  with  the  aid  of  a  powerful 
imagination,  he  may  without  much  difficulty  persuade 
people  that  he  really  does.     He  may  invent  a  few  scan- 
dalous stories  simply  for  the  purpose  of  contradicting 
them,  thereby  showing  to  what  superior  sources  of  in- 
formation he  has  access.     He  may  announce  that  mar- 
riages which  have  never  been  dreamed  of  are  not  to 
come  off,  and  that  Cabinet  changes,  the  reports  of  which 
he  has  invented,  have  been  postponed.     All  this  he  may 
do,  and  nobody  will  take  the  trouble  to  contradict  him, 
or  if  they  do  it  will  only  advertise  him  all  the  more,  and 
cause  his  paper  to  be  more  eagerly  sought  after.     For, 
be  it  noted  that  the  thousands  of  readers  who  dehght 
in  this  species  of  composition  care  very  little  whether 
it  is  true  or  false.     They  probably,  as  a  rule,  think  it 
neither  the  one  nor  the  other  ;    but  it  amuses  them  for 
the  moment.     Some  of  it  must  be  real,  they  think;  and 
to  be  brought  for  a  few  minutes  into  contact  with  circles 
about  which  the  British  middle  class  is  insatiably  curi- 
ous is   an   enjoyment  which  they  are  quite  willing  to 
pay  for. 

I  knew  that  I  could  not  provide  it  for  them.     I  was 
not  up  to  Mr.  Chuckster  in  ''  The  Old  Curiosity  Shop." 


228  TORY   MEMORIES. 

But  some  kind  of  letters  had  to  be  written  and  my  two 
leaders  besides,  in  addition  to  the  literary  work  which 
I  had  in  hand.  Judge,  then,  what  was  my  horror  when, 
two  days  before  the  paper  was  to  come  out,  I  had  one 
letter  from  Hannay  to  say  that  he  couldn't  write,  and 
another  from  the  editor  at  Leeds  to  say  that  they  could 
do  nothing  at  their  end,  and  that  the  other  two  leaders 
must  be  furnished  from  London.  I  had  no  time  to  look 
out  for  other  contributors.  Traill  came  to  the  rescue 
like  a  man,  and  by  superhuman  exertions  we  pulled  the 
waggon  out  of  the  rut.  But  it  was  idle  to  expect  that  a 
paper  brought  out  under  these  difficulties  should  be  all 
that  a  first  number  ought  to  be.  I  did  not  blame  the 
committee  for  complaining  of  it,  but  only  for  putting 
the  saddle  on  the  wrong  horse.  It  was  supposed  to  be 
all  my  fault,  and  I  soon  saw  it  was  useless  to  repeat  the 
facts  to  men  who  had  got  only  one  idea  into  their  heads, 
who  knew  nothing  whatever  about  journaHsm,  and 
could  not,  perhaps,  have  fully  understood  my  case  even 
had  they  been  willing  to  listen  to  it.  However,  we  did 
not  part  company  over  that  job,  and  I  continued  on 
good  terms  with  them  for  some  years.  I  soon  got  rid 
of  the  London  letter,  and  continued  to  send  them  two 
leaders  a  week  for  nearly  ten  years  longer.  The  York- 
shire Post  became  a  great  Tory  paper,  and  in  spite  of  the 
little  fiasco  which  occurred  on  its  opening  day  I  still 
regard  it  with  a  paternal  feeling  and  am  proud  of  the 
share  which  I  took  in  building  up  its  fortunes. 

Among  the  pleasant  acquaintances  which  I  then  made 
were  Mr.  George  Lascelles,  a  brother  of  Lord  Hare- 
wood  ;  Mr.  Charles  Tennant,  of  Scarcroft ;  and  Lord 
Nevill,  the  present  Lord  Abergavenny,  who  then  had  a 
residence  near  Leeds.     They  were  all  active  members  of 


TORY  JOURNALISM  AND  LITERATURE.    229 

the  committee  ;  and  I  spent  a  very  pleasant  day  or 
two  with  each  of  them.  George  Lascelles  had  married 
Lady  Louisa  Murray,  a  daughter  of  Lord  Mansfield ; 
and  I  found  also  in  her  ladyship  the  old  Jacobite 
traditions  in  full  force.  She  often  spoke  of  the  Duke 
of  Cumberland  as  ''  the  Butcher/'  and  no  doubt  if  all 
was  true  that  was  reported  of  him,  he  deserved  the 
name.  Mr.  Lascelles  lived  in  the  dower  house  near 
Harewood,  and  besides  entertaining  me  there  he  took 
me  with  him  on  a  fishing  expedition  up  to  Malham 
Tarn,  a  small  lake  among  the  hills,  well-stocked  with 
trout,  which  I  thought  the  most  delicious  I  had  ever  tasted. 

After  the  change  of  Ministry  in  1868  the  Globe  became 
for  a  time  the  leading  evening  organ  of  the  Tory  party. 
Mr.  Marwood  Tucker  was  the  Editor,  and  Mr.  Montagu 
Corry  was  the  interpres  who  brought  us  the  news  from 
Olympus.  I  wrote  for  the  Globe  for  a  short  time,  but 
I  cannot  recollect  much  about  it.  I  don't  know  whether 
I  ought  to  style  my  recollections  of  the  Parliamentary 
work  which  I  did  for  the  Graphic  a  Tory  memory  or  not. 
I  think  perhaps  I  may,  as  I  fear  I  acted  on  Dr.  Johnson's 
principle  and  took  care  that  ''  the  Whig  dogs  should 
not  have  the  best  of  it."  But  my  work  was  purely 
descriptive — a  description  of  the  debates  as  lively  as  I 
could  make  it,  but  not  analysing  the  arguments  of  the 
different  speeches.  I  used  to  Hke  that  work  very  much. 
I  sat  in  the  Reporters'  Gallery,  and  heard  many  interest- 
ing ''  sets-to  "  between  the  leaders.  However,  it  was 
just  about  this  time  that  I  was  placed  on  the  staff  of 
the  Standard,  which  left  me  little  time  for  other  news- 
paper work. 

About  this  time,  too,  a  dinner  was  given  to  a  number 
of  Tory  journahsts  at  the  expense,  I  suppose,  of  the 


230  TORY    MEMORIES. 

Carlton,  at  the  Star  and  Garter  at  Richmond.  Montagu 
Corry  was  there,  and  Lord  Skelmersdale,  and  Mr.  Bell, 
and  we  had  a  very  jovial  party.  Montagu  Corry,  I 
remember,  was  taken  ill  in  the  middle  of  dinner,  being 
seized  with  a  fit  of  some  kind,  and  fell  off  his  chair,  to 
the  great  alarm  and  anxiety  of  the  whole  company. 
But  it  turned  out,  fortunately,  to  be  nothing  serious. 
But  I  must  carry  my  readers  forward  now  into  other 
departments  of  Tory  literature,  after  some  brief  memo- 
ries of  the  Standard,  which  I  joined  permanently  in 
the  summer  of  1872. 

When  I  joined  the  Standard  the  principal  leader 
writer  was  Percy  Greg,  an  able  man,  who  usually  wrote 
three  or  four  articles  a  week.  He  had  occupied  this 
position  for  some  years,  and  I  remember  Mark  Pattison 
saying  that  whenever  he  took  up  the  Standard  he  was 
sure  of  finding  at  least  one  very  good,  well-reasoned 
leader ;  and  I  will  venture  to  say  that  nine  times  out 
of  ten  that  was  Percy  Greg's.  At  this  time  Mr.  John- 
stone was  Editor,  in  succession  to  Captain  Hamber,  who 
had  retired.  Three  or  four  of  us  would  go  down  every 
afternoon  and  wait  in  a  Uttle  ante-room  till  we  were 
summoned  one  by  one  to  the  Editor's  presence,  when  our 
task  for  the  day,  if  any,  was  arranged.  At  this  time 
Mr.  Johnstone's  father,  the  proprietor  of  the  paper,  was 
aUve,  and  he  used  to  entertain  the  staff  royally,  either 
at  his  house  on  the  river,  which  had  formerly  been,  and 
now  is  again,  Ranelagh,  or  at  another  place  famous  for 
its  glass  houses,  which  he  had  in  Kent.  After  a  year 
some  misunderstanding  arose  between  the  father  and 
son,  which  led  again  to  a  change  of  editors,  Mr.  Mudford 
being  selected  for  the  post.  Under  his  management 
the  paper  rose  rapidly  in  public  estimation,  and  he  was 


TORY    JOURNALISM    AND    LITERATURE.   231 

ably  seconded  by  Mr.  G.  B.  Curtis,  the  assistant-editor. 
Mr.  T.  H.  Escott,  Mr.  Richardson  Evans,  and  Mr.  Alfred 
Austin  were  now  the  chief  leader  writers.  Mr.  Watts,  a 
very  forcible  writer  on  foreign  affairs,  not  being  able,  as 
I  understood,  to  agree  with  Mr.  Mudford,  retired  with 
some  other  members  of  the  staff,  who  were  equally  un- 
able to  accommodate  themselves  to  the  new  regime. 
Foreign  affairs  now  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  present 
poet  laureate,  who  continued  for  many  years  to  repre- 
sent the  Standard  upon  all  questions  of  interest  con- 
nected with  Continental  matters.  He  was  in  frequent 
communication  with  Lord  Salisbury ;  and  it  was  gener- 
ally allowed  that  on  all  subjects  of  this  nature  the 
Standard  occupied  a  foremost  place  among  the  leading 
London  journals.  Austin  used  latterly  to  send  up  his 
articles  from  his  place  in  Kent,  and  they  generally  arrived 
in  Shoe  Lane  between  ten  and  eleven  o'clock.  At  other 
times  he  wrote  at  the  office,  and  Curtis  used  to  say  of 
him  :  *'  Austin's  the  man  for  my  money  :  give  him 
three  ideas,  shut  him  up  in  a  room,  and  in  one  hour 
you  have  your  three  paragraphs.''  Mr.  Mudford  seldom 
came  down  at  night,  and  he  and  Curtis  used  to  com- 
municate by  telephone.  Escott,  when  Parliament  was 
sitting,  used  to  come  with  the  latest  news  from  the  House 
of  Commons,  bustling  in  in  full  evening  dress,  ready  to 
expose  the  latest  Liberal  dodge  or  to  extol  with  equal 
ability  the  latest  Conservative  riposte.  He  was  a  very 
clever  writer,  and  very  adroit  in  suggesting  what  it 
might  not  be  expedient  to  say  openly ;  but  he  burned 
the  candle  at  both  ends,  and  brought  on  an  iUness 
which  prevented  him  from  ever  resuming  that  regular 
newspaper  work  which  puts  so  severe  a  strain  on 
both  mind  and  body. 


232  TORY    MEMORIES. 

I  did  not  take  up  regular  night  work  at  the  Standard 
till  the  year  1884,  and  kept  it  going  for  fourteen  years. 
But  before  that  I  had  to  go  down  to  the  Reporters* 
Gallery  to  write  on  the  debate,  which  often  kept  us  up 
till  two  or  three  o'clock  in  the  morning.  It  was  the 
hardest  work  and  the  most  unsatisfactory  that  I  ever 
did.  We  used  to  write  in  one  of  the  committee  rooms 
where  the  reporters  sat  to  transcribe  their  shorthand 
notes,  and  a  messenger  was  in  waiting  from  each  news- 
paper to  carry  back  their  copy  to  the  office.  The  leader 
writer — I  speak  only  for  the  Standard — had  to  sit  in 
the  Gallery  straining  his  neck  to  catch  what  was  going 
on  down  below,  and  when  he  thought  he  had  got  enough 
material  for  a  paragraph,  he  had  to  rush  off  to  the 
committee  room  and  write  as  fast  as  the  pen  could  travel 
over  the  paper,  hand  his  copy  to  the  messenger,  and  then 
tear  back  to  the  Gallery  to  pester  all  whom  he  knew  for 
some  scraps  of  information  as  to  what  had  occurred 
during  his  absence.  This  process  had  to  be  repeated 
several  times  before  the  article  was  finished,  and  what 
it  would  have  looked  like  next  morning  had  there  been 
no  one  in  Shoe  Lane  to  fine-draw  the  edges  and  reconcile 
the  contradictions,  it  is  painful  to  consider. 

This  system,  however,  did  not  continue  long  after 
Mr.  Mudford's  appointment.  Henceforth  articles  on 
the  debate  of  the  night  were  written  in  the  office.  How 
well  I  remember  my  despair  and  horror  when  a  whole 
sheaf  of  '*  ffimsy  ''  would  be  flung  down  on  the  table  before 
me,  perhaps  as  late  as  half-past  eleven  or  twelve,  the 
article  having  to  be  finished  by  half-past  two.  To  plod 
through  that  mass  of  matter,  get  anything  like  a  clear 
idea  of  its  contents,  and  then  write  a  column  of  com- 
ment all  in  a  Httle  more  than  a  couple  of  hours  was  a 


TORY   JOURNALISM   AND    LITERATURE.    233 

job  which  even  now  I  can  scarcely  understand  how  I 
accompHshed. 

It  was  a  pleasant  drive  home  on  a  summer  night 
down  the  Embankment,  or  rather  I  should  say  morning, 
for  the  day  was  often  dawning  before  I  reached  my  own 
door  ;  but  as  I  leaned  back  in  my  hansom  I  had  not 
even  the  compensation  which  is  yielded  by  the  conscious- 
ness of  work  well  done,  however  difficult  or  laborious. 
I  used  to  torture  myself  all  the  way  by  reflecting  how 
much  more  forcibly  this  or  that  argument  could  have 
been  put,  how  much  more  vividly  such  and  such  a  point 
could  have  been  brought  out,  how  much  more  neatly 
some  particular  sentence  might  have  been  constructed. 
These  bitter  reflections  were  too  often  justified  by  a 
sight  of  the  paper  next  day ;  and  though  my  night 
leaders  were  rarely  blamed  and  often  praised  by  the 
editor,  and  though  the  general  public  perhaps  never 
noticed  the  kind  of  flaws  which  so  distressed  myself, 
I  could  not  shut  my  own  eyes  to  their  existence,  or 
derive  the  slightest  pleasure  from  reading  over  an  article 
in  which  they  occurred.  When  I  went  down  at  night  I 
had,  of  course,  to  take  my  chance  as  to  what  the  subject 
for  the  leader  might  be.  At  other  times  the  subjects 
usually  allotted  to  myself  were  Church  questions,  and 
questions  of  constitutional  or  party  history.  When 
the  Ritualistic  controversy  was  at  its  height,  in  the 
days  of  Tooth,  Dale,  and  others,  I  wrote  all  the  Standard 
leaders  on  these  cases,  and  they  had  the  good  fortune 
to  attract  the  approval  of  Dean  Lake  of  Durham.  But 
then  I  had  the  invaluable  assistance  of  the  present  Sir 
Arthur  Charles,  who  at  that  time  was  almost  always 
engaged  as  counsel  for  the  defence.  He  kept  me  straight 
on  all  points  of  law ;    and  as  I  had  in  early  life  taken 


234  TORY    MEMORIES. 

a  great  deal  of  interest  in  these  questions,  I  wrote,  I  may 
say,  with  knowledge. 

In  my  articles  on  Welsh  Disestablishment  I  was 
much  assisted  by  Canon  Bevan,  of  St,  David's,  and  on 
some  later  Ritualistic  questions  I  had  the  honour  of 
being  instructed  by  Bishop  Creighton,  who  said  that,  let 
the  bishops  do  what  they  would,  he  despaired  of  coming 
to  terms  with  the  extreme  men.  ''  We  offer  to  meet  them 
more  than  half  way,'*  he  said,  "  but  they  won't  be  met." 
I  was  charmed  with  Bishop  Creighton.  He  reminded  me 
a  little  by  his  manner  of  Archdeacon  Denison.  He  was 
a  tall  man,  too  ;  but  he  fell  away  down  below.  I  think 
he  had  the  thinnest  legs  of  any  man  I  ever  saw,  except 
the  fourteenth  Earl  of  Derby. 

My  connection  with  the  Standard  terminated  early 
in  1906,  having  lasted  nearly  thirty-four  years.  It  is 
one  of  my  most  agreeable  memories.  I  liked  the  work. 
I  liked  the  company,  of  whom  more  presently.  And  I 
liked  the  pay,  though  latterly,  when  I  gave  up  the 
night  work,  in  1898,  it  of  course  diminished.  The 
annual  dinner,  which  was  supposed  to  be  one  given 
by  the  printing  and  publishing  staff  to  the  editorial 
staff,  was  always  a  great  success.  The  last  two  or  three 
that  I  attended  took  place  at  the  Crystal  Palace.  All 
the  leading  contributors  were  expected  to  speak,  and 
some  of  the  others  also.  I  know  I  said  something  once 
in  one  of  my  speeches  about  the  badness  of  my  hand- 
writing, which  I  couldn't  always  read  myself.  One  of 
the  compositors  said  plaintively,  ''  Mr.  Kebbel  says  he 
can't  always  make  out  his  own  handwriting.  No  more 
can't  we."  This  remark,  which  I  was  fooHsh  enough 
to  repeat,  is  frequently  quoted  against  me  by  those 
who  ought  to  know  better. 


TORY  JOURNALISM  AND  LITERATURE.    235 

One  advantage  of  the  Standard  system  was  that  you 
were  paid  for  your  articles  as  soon  as  they  were  sent  in. 
Leaders  would  naturally  be  used  at  once  ;  but  reviews 
and  biographies  were  often,  especially  the  last,  kept 
over  for  a  long  time,  and  on  most  other  papers — I  almost 
think  on  all — you  had  to  wait  till  they  were  published 
before  you  saw  your  money.  The  Tory  Standard  was  a 
bright  exception  to  this  rule,  which,  however  convenient 
to  proprietors,  might  under  certain  circumstances  work 
the  greatest  injustice  to  contributors.  I  remember  once 
pointing  this  out  to  Mr.  Buckle,  who  at  once  acknow- 
ledged the  truth  of  what  I  said.  He  had  asked  me  to 
write  the  biography  of  Mr.  Gladstone  for  the  Times 
ready  for  the  day  when  that  great  man  should  be  taken 
from  us,  and  every  now  and  then  he  returned  me  the 
MS.  to  be  brought  up  to  date.  At  length  I  said  to  him  : 
'*  You  see,  this  has  been  going  on  a  long  while.  Mr. 
Gladstone  keeps  in  perfectly  good  health.  Suppose  he 
outlives  me,  which  is  quite  possible  :  I  shall  have  written 
this  biography  for  nothing.'*  As  I  say,  he  saw  the 
situation  at  once,  and  sent  me  a  very  handsome  cheque 
the  next  day. 

I  did  a  good  deal  of  literary  work  for  the  Times 
under  both  Delane  and  Chenery,  but  these  contribu- 
tions would  hardly  come  under  the  head  of  Tory 
memories.  Chenery  proposed  to  me  to  join  the  Times ^ 
but  required  as  a  condition  of  discussing  the  sub- 
ject that  I  should  leave  the  Standard  first.  This  I 
declined  to  do,  for  I  might  not  have  come  to  terms 
with  Chenery,  and  then  I  should  have  been  left  out  in 
the  cold.  Besides,  the  Standard  had  always  treated 
me  very  well,  and  in  some  respects  indulgently,  and  I 
did  not  Hke  the  thought  of  turning  my  back  upon  them, 


236  TORY    MEMORIES. 

or  of  ceasing  to  write  openly  for  the  Tory  party,  to  whom 
I  was  bound  to  beheve  I  was  doing  some  service. 
Again,  I  think  the  work  on  the  Times  would  have 
been  harder,  and  as  I  wasn't  getting  younger,  I  thought 
I  might  perhaps  break  down. 

Other  men  connected  with  the  Times  whom  I  knew 
well  were  William  Stebbing  and  Samuel  Lucas,  who  each 
in  turn  acted  as  literary  editor  of  the  paper.  Lucas  I 
have  already  mentioned  as  a  former  editor  of  the  Press. 
He  was,  of  course,  a  Tory,  a  most  genial  and  gentlemanly 
man,  and  when  the  Conservatives  came  in  in  1858  he 
expected  something  very  good  from  them.  He  had  been 
instrumental  in  arranging  the  coalition  between  the 
Radicals  and  the  Tories  against  the  Conspiracy  to 
Murder  Bill,  when  an  amendment  moved  by  Mr.  Milner 
Gibson  was  carried  against  the  Government  by  a 
majority  of  nineteen.  Lucas,  however,  was  disap- 
pointed. He  had  run  down  the  game,  but  he  did  not 
get  even  the  jackal's  share.  He  was  offered  something — 
a  distributorship  of  stamps,  I  believe,  an  office  now 
extinct,  but  worth  at  that  time  £600  to  ;f8oo  a  year. 
Lucas,  however,  would  have  had  to  leave  London  if  he 
had  taken  it,  and  this  he  declined  to  do. 

Of  Johnstone,  for  some  time  Editor  of  the  Standard, 
I  have  nothing  more  to  say  except  that  he  was  a  cheerful 
and  courteous  person,  whom  it  was  easy  to  get  on  with. 
He  was  an  Oxford  man,  and  at  one  time  a  Fellow  of 
St.  John's.  But  he  was  not,  I  should  say,  specially  well 
qualified  for  the  post  which  his  father  conferred  upon  him. 
Mudford,  on  the  contrary,  was  admirably  fitted  for  such 
work.  Nobody  is  perfect,  either  personally  or  officially, 
and  Mudford  sometimes  both  gave  offence  and  took 
offence  when  none  was  intended.     This  caused  at  times 


TORY  JOURNALISM  AND  LITERATURE.  237 

some  friction  with  his  contributors  ;  but  I  don't  know 
that  it  ever  did  any  real  harm.  It  would  have  been  all 
the  better  if  Mudford  could  have  overcome  his  dislike 
of  Society.  But  he  would  go  nowhere,  and  he  told 
Lady  Jeune,  who  pressed  him  repeatedly  to  visit  her, 
and  actually  sought  to  dig  him  out  of  his  house  in 
Addison  Road,  that  he  did  not  want  to  have  said  to 
him,  what  Lady  Holland  said  to  Macaulay,  "  I  thought 
you  were  thin,  and  you  are  fat ;  I  thought  you  were 
witty,  and  you  are  dull,''  etc.  But  the  editorial  chair 
was  his  throne.  There  he  was  in  his  element — a  great 
editor — the  greatest,  perhaps,  with  one  exception  of 
the  Victorian  age. 

I  never  got  to  be  on  terms  of  very  close  intimacy 
with  Mr.  Mudford.  I  did  not  very  often  even  see  him. 
But  in  his  communications  with  me  he  always  expressed 
himself  in  the  most  friendly  terms,  which  I  am  sure  were 
perfectly  sincere.  When  he  gave  up  the  editorship,  he 
wrote  me  a  letter,  which  I  have  carefully  preserved — so 
carefully,  indeed,  that  I  cannot  find  it — signifying  in  the 
handsomest  terms  his  sense  of  my  services  and  his  regret 
at  the  severance  of  our  intercourse.  He  was  a  kind- 
hearted — nay,  a  warm-hearted  man — in  reality,  though 
his  manner  was  often  cold  and  a  trifle  constrained,  aris- 
ing, I  often  thought,  from  nervousness  rather  than  from 
any  want  of  real  sympathy. 

Mr.  Curtis  I  saw  almost  every  day.  He  was  a  very 
cheerful  and  genial  oflicial.  On  Mr.  Mudford's  retire- 
ment he  succeeded  to  the  editorship,  which  he  held  till 
November,  1905,  when  the  Standard  passed  into  the 
hands  of  Mr.  Pearson,  and  Curtis  retired  from  the  stage. 
The  change  came  upon  all  of  us  very  suddenly.  The 
first  I  knew  of  it  was  from  an  announcement  in  the 


238  TORY   MEMORIES. 

Standard  to  the  effect  that  on  that  day  the  transfer 
would  take  effect.  When  I  went  down  to  Shoe  Lane  in 
the  afternoon  I  found  that  Curtis  had  only  been  told  of 
the  transaction  the  day  before.  We  were  naturally  all 
very  much  astonished.  Mr.  Curtis  went  away  at  once, 
Mr.  Sidney  Low  and  Mr.  Jeyes  remained.  But  the 
literary  and  biographical  department,  which  branches 
had  been  latterly  my  chief  sphere  of  usefulness,  were 
reduced  to  such  small  dimensions  that  I  was  not  at  all 
surprised  to  find  that  my  services  were  no  longer  in 
requisition.  Night  work  I  could  no  longer  do,  and 
almost  all  the  leaders  were  thenceforth  written  at  night. 

I  never  knew  what  induced  Mr.  Johnstone  to  part 
with  the  paper,  which  was  a  very  valuable  property,  and 
had  shown  no  signs  of  a  declining  circulation.  I  can- 
not say,  as  I  should  like  to  do,  that  the  transaction  was 
carried  out  with  much  consideration  for  members  of  the 
staff,  for  whom  little  thought  seems  to  have  been  shown 
by  those  who  had  so  long  profited  by  their  services.  I 
am  sorry  to  say  this  of  a  Tory  newspaper,  especially  as 
it  is  the  last  word  I  have  to  say  about  Tory  journalism 
proper.  I  must  now  turn  my  attention  to  the  Tory 
periodicals,  or  periodicals  in  which  I  wrote  as  a  Tory. 

My  first  article  in  the  Quarterly  Review  had  for  its 
subject  an  excellent  specimen  of  an  intellectual  Tory, 
one  whose  creed  drew  nourishment  from  mental  science 
as  well  as  from  practical  interests  and  historical  experi- 
ences :  I  mean  De  Quincey.  I  rather  think  that  Elwin 
was  the  editor  who  accepted  this  article,  though  Mac- 
pherson  had  succeeded  him  before  it  was  published. 
This  was  in  1862.  If  I  had  to  write  the  article  again, 
I  don't  know  that  I  should  say  all  that  I  said  then.  I 
was  greatly  in  love  with  metaphysics  at  that  time,  and 


TORY  JOURNALISM  AND  LITERATURE.    239 

full  of  Oxford  logic,  and  I  remember  that  when  I  first 
joined  the  Press,  and  Coulton,  my  editor,  wrote  an 
article  highly  in  praise  of  Paley,  I  had  the  audacity  to 
remonstrate  with  him,  and  did,  indeed,  touch  him  so 
nearly  that  he  actually  wrote  eight  closely-written  sides 
of  notepaper  in  reply.  I  was  under  the  influence  of  the 
same  set  of  ideas  when  I  wrote  the  article  on  De  Quincey, 
and  made  great  play,  I  remember,  with  the  yvcopc/jLoyrepov 
r)^lv  and  the  <f>v<7u  yvcopLfjuorepovy  a  right  understanding 
of  which  I  professed  to  think  essential  to  any  true 
conception  of  Toryism.  That  there  was  much  youth- 
ful pedantry  in  all  this  I  shall  willingly  allow,  but 
after  all,  it  was  but  a  crude  attempt  to  find  a  basis 
for  Toryism  in  political  philosophy.  I  was  groping  in 
the  dark,  perhaps,  after  something  in  itself  desirable,  and, 
at  all  events,  I  had  the  satisfaction  of  seeing  my  article 
fiU  the  place  of  honour  in  that  number  of  the  Quarterly. 

I  wrote  a  few  more  articles  while  Mr.  Macpherson 
continued  editor — one  on  Lord  Liverpool  among  them. 
But  with  the  accession  of  Dr.  Smith  to  that  high  office, 
I  think  I  may  say  that  I  became  a  regular  contributor. 
I  had  been  led  by  "  Coningsby  "  and  ''  Sybil ''  to  study 
the  history  of  the  Tory  party  in  the  eighteenth  century, 
and  I  wrote  for  Dr.  Smith  a  series  of  articles  on  the 
statesmen  of  that  era,  from  the  accession  of  Queen  Anne 
to  the  death  of  George  III.  I  had  begun  with  Boling- 
broke  in  Frase/s  Magazine,  when  Froude  was  editor; 
and  I  continued  the  series  in  the  Quarterly  with  Lord 
Godolphin,  Lord  Peterborough,  Sir  Robert  Walpole, 
Lord  Carteret,  and  the  Duke  of  Grafton.  With  the 
exception  of  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  these  were  all  Tories 
— that  is,  they  all  in  different  ways  and  at  different 
times  endeavoured  to  break  down  that  party  system 


240  TORY    MEMORIES. 

which  the  Whigs  had  estabHshed,  and  to  secure  greater 
liberty  to  the  Crown.     I  continued  the  subject  in  other 
periodicals    as   well.     But    I    also    contributed   to    the 
Quarterly  two  or  three  articles  on  the  politics  of  the 
day — one  on  ''  The  Difficulties  of  Good  Government  '* 
in  1888,  and  another  on  ''  Coalition  ''  in  1893.     Both  of 
them    were    suggested   by   the    same   phenomena — the 
desperation,    namely,    with    which    daring    statesmen 
will  play  the  game  of  party,  when  they  see  no  pros- 
pect   of   accession  to   power  by   any  ordinary  means. 
There  is  a  scene  in  *'  The  Heart  of  Midlothian ''  which 
exactly   illustrates   my   meaning :     ''  Whistler,    do   the 
cords  hurt  you  ?  ''  says  Jeanie  to  the  youthful  prisoner, 
who  was  known  only  by  that  name.     ''  Very  much." 
''  But  if  I  were  to  slacken  them,  you  would  harm  me  ?  '' 
''  No,  I  would  not — you  never  harmed  me  or  mine.'* 
"  There  may  be  good  in  him  yet,''  thought  Jeanie  ;    *'  I 
will  try  fair  play  with  him.*'     She  cut  his  bonds,  he 
stood  upright,  looked  round  with  a  laugh  of  wild  exulta- 
tion, clapped  his  hands  together,  and  sprang  from  the 
ground,  as  if  in  transport  on  finding  himself  at  liberty. 
He  looked  so  wild  that  Jeanie  trembled  at  what  she  had 
done.     ''  Let    me   out,"    said   the   young   savage.     "  I 
wunna  unless  you  promise."     ''  I'll  make  you  glad  to  let 
us  both  out,"  and  so  saying,  he  seized  the  lighted  candle 
and  threw  it  among  the  flax,  which  was  instantly  in  a 
flame.     For  ''  let  us  out  "  substitute  *'  let  us  in  "  and 
you  have  the  political  situation. 

Burke  says  much  the  same  about  pohtical  gamblers. 
Of  coahtions  all  are  not  bad.  It  depends  on  the  motives 
and  on  the  principles  of  the  coalescing  parties.  The 
coahtion  of  Lord  Nottingham  and  the  Whigs  in  Queen 
Anne's  reign  to  secure  the   censure  of  the  Peace,   the 


TORY  JOURNALISM  AND  LITERATURE.   241 

coalition  of  Whigs  and  Tories,  diametrically  opposed  to 
each  other  on  the  two  leading  questions  of  the  day,  the 
American  War  and  the  Royal  Prerogative,  in  order  to 
crush  Lord  Shelburne,  are  examples  of  such  transactions 
in  their  worst  form.  Other  combinations  of  the  same 
kind  may  usually  be  accepted  as  consistent  with  the 
recognised  code  of  Party  warfare,  and  sometimes, 
indeed,  are  unavoidable. 

In  the  article  on  Walpole,  I  remember  I  had  called 
in  question  some  assertion  of  Mr.  John  Morley's  relative, 
I  think,  to  the  Craftsman,  which  that  gentleman  rather 
resented,  and  in  return  drew  a  fancy  picture  of  this  and 
other  articles  which,  I  have  every  reason  to  suppose, 
was  intended  as  a  representation  of  my  own.  It  was 
natural  enough,  but  it  was  not  correct.  I  continued  my 
articles  on  Eighteenth  Century  Toryism  in  the  Fort- 
nightly Review  and  in  the  National.  In  the  former 
appeared  ''  The  Tory  Party  under  Wyndham  and 
Bolingbroke  ''  ;  in  the  other  were  introduced  notices 
of  Shelburne,  North,  and  Pitt ;  and  at  the  suggestion  of 
Mr.  Courthope,  who  then  edited  the  National  Review 
conjointly  with  Mr.  Alfred  Austin,  I  prolonged  the  series 
down  to  the  death  of  Mr.  Disraeli  in  1881. 

When  it  became  necessary  to  appoint  a  new  editor 
to  the  Quarterly  Review  in  succession  to  Dr.  Smith,  I 
heard  that  my  own  name  had  been  put  forward  as  a  fit 
and  proper  person  to  fill  the  vacant  chair.  When  these 
*'  Memories  ''  were  projected,  I  asked  Mr.  Murray  what 
foundation  there  was  for  this  report.  He  replied  that 
there  was  none  at  all,  that  Mr.  Rowland  Prothero  had 
been  fixed  upon  as  the  new  editor  long  before,  and  no 
other  man  had  ever  come  into  competition  with  him. 
It  is  very  curious  how  such  rumours  get  afloat.  Not  a 
Q 


242  TORY   MEMORIES. 

syllable  had  ever  been  said  to  myself  on  the  subject, 
nor  had  I  ever  given  a  thought  to  it. 

When  Mr.  Prothero  was  installed,  a  dinner  was  given 
in  his  honour,  to  which  I  was  invited,  and  I  remember 
that  in  returning  thanks  for  his  health,  he  discussed 
at  some  length  the  advantages  and  disadvantages  of  the 
anonymous  system,  declaring  himself  strongly  in  favour 
of  it.  But  some  time  afterwards,  when  his  brother, 
George  Prothero,  became  editor,  he  began  to  make 
exceptions  to  the  rule,  and  in  the  last  article  which  I 
wrote  for  the  Quarterly,  on  the  Creevy  Papers,  I  was 
invited  to  put  my  name  to  it,  which  I  did.  There  was 
no  compulsion ;  but  in  that  number  (January,  1904) 
six  articles  out  of  the  twelve  were  signed.  Two  other 
articles  which  I  wrote  at  that  time  with  a  strong  Tory 
bias  were  on  the  Waverley  novels  and  ''  Studies  of  the 
'Forty-five,''  and  with  this  last  I  interwove  some  of  the 
Jacobite  stories  for  which  I  was  indebted  to  Lady  Jeune. 

When  the  National  Review  was  established  in  1883 
its  birth  was  celebrated  by  a  dinner  at  which  Mr.  Alfred 
Austin,  Mr.  Courthope,  Lord  Salisbury,  Mr.  Balfour, 
Mr.  Raikes,  and,  I  think,  Mr.  Mallock,  were  present. 
It  was  then  that  I  first  made  the  acquaintance  of 
Mr.  Balfour.  I  sat  next  him  at  dinner,  and  I  remember 
the  conversation  turned  a  good  deal  on  old  Oxford  and 
Cambridge  stories,  of  which  I  was  not  surprised  to  find 
that  he  had  a  newer  assortment  than  I  had.  At  that 
time  he  had  recently  distinguished  himself  by  a  very 
spirited  speech  on  the  Kilmainham  Compact,  and  was 
recognised  as  a  rapidly  rising  politician.  In  the  follow- 
ing year  he  was  instrumental  in  arranging  with  Lord 
Hartington  the  compromise  on  the  Reform  Bill  which 
was  carried  out  in  1885.     To   the  first  volume  of  the 


TORY  JOURNALISM  AND  LITERATURE.    243 

National  Re-oiew  he  contributed  two  very  interesting 
articles  on  Bishop  Berkeley.  Lord  Lytton,  Lord  Car- 
narvon, Cecil  Raikes,  Earl  Percy,  and  Clare  Sewell 
Read  were  among  the  earliest  contributors.  And  I 
know  the  extent  to  which  the  new  review  was  patronised 
by  the  leaders  of  the  Tory  party  occasioned  some  little 
soreness  in  quarters  where  similar  recognition  and  assist- 
ance had  not  been  experienced,  though  the  services 
rendered  were  at  least  equally  meritorious. 

It  was  at  Mr.  Courthope's  suggestion,  as  already 
stated,  that  I  wrote  in  the  National  Review  the  articles  on 
''Tory  Prime  Ministers,''  afterwards  republished  with  the 
misleading  introductory  title,  ''  A  History  of  Toryism,'' 
which,  of  course,  they  were  not.  Lord  Carnarvon  thought 
the  two  articles  on  Sir  Robert  Peel  the  best  of  them.  My 
own  favourite  among  them  has  always  been  the  article 
on  Pitt  which  appeared  in  an  early  number  of  the 
National  Review,  and  another  which  was  published  much 
later  in  1892,  being  a  review  of  Lord  Rosebery's  *'  Life 
of  Pitt."  In  whatever  I  have  written  about  Mr.  Pitt 
I  have  always  tried  to  bring  into  prominence  his  moral 
greatness.  In  this  he  stands  alone  among  English 
Ministers,  whether  Whig  or  Tory.  Lord  Rosebery 
made  some  mistake,  I  think,  about  the  composition  of 
the  French  and  English  armies  during  the  Revolutionary 
war,  which  as  a  Tory  I  felt  bound  to  notice.  But  what 
I  said  about  Pitt  I  am  vain  enough  to  think  may  bear 
repeating  here.  My  own  father  was  turned  thirty  years 
of  age  at  the  death  of  Mr.  Pitt,  and  he  could  well  remem- 
ber the  general  grief,  verging  on  despair,  which  it  created. 

Thus  lived  and  died  William  Pitt,  the  greatest  Parliamentary 
statesman  whom  England  has  produced,  if  greatness  is  to  be  measured 
not  merely  by  the  genius  of  the  individual,  but  by  the  quality  of  the 


244  TORY   MEMORIES. 

circumstances  in  which  his  lot  is  cast,  and  the  magnitude  of  the  diffi- 
culties which  he  is  called  upon  to  confront  and  overcome.  Chatham 
is  a  splendid  figure  in  our  annals  ;  but  he  never  was,  for  he  never 
had  the  chance  of  being,  the  one  man  upon  whom,  through  long  years 
of  danger  from  both  foreign  and  domestic  enemies,  a  nation  reposed 
with  confidence  ;  whose  removal  from  power  was  the  signal  for 
general  despair ;  whose  restoration  revived  the  public  spirit  as  sim- 
rise  renews  the  daylight ;  and  whose  death  was  lamented  by  the 
tears  not  only  of  personal  friends  and  political  supporters,  but  of 
thousands  who  had  never  seen  him,  yet  felt  themselves  reduced  to 
sudden  helplessness  by  the  loss  of  their  tried  protector. 

This,  after  all,  is  only  a  feeble  prose  paraphrase  of 

Scott's  beautiful  lines,  which  express  exactly  the  same 

thing  : 

Now  is  the  stately  column  broke. 
The  beacon  light  is  quenched  in  smoke, 
The  trumpet's  silver  sound  is  still. 
The  warder  silent  on  the  hill. 

I  never  thought  that  either  Lord  Stanhope  in  his  "  Life 
of  Pitt,*'  or  Mr.  Disraeli  in  his  interesting  diagnosis  of 
that  illustrious  statesman,  much  less  Lord  Macaulay  in 
the  ''  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,*'  did  full  justice  to  this 
aspect  of  Pitt's  career. 

When  the  Fortnightly  Review  was  edited  by  Mr. 
Morley,  I  wrote  some  articles  for  him,  and  he  was  pleased 
to  say  that  he  admired  my  writing  when  I  had  ''  a  suf- 
ficiently large  canvas.*'  I  confess  I  like  plenty  of  room. 
As  Johnson  said  of  himself  that  he  liked  to  fold  his 
arms  and  have  his  talk  out,  so  in  writing  I  like  to  have 
it  out  with  myself,  and  to  follow  up  an  argument  to  its 
logical  conclusion. 

When  Mr.  Escott  succeeded  Mr.  Morley  in  1882, 
he  proposed  to  give  a  dinner  to  the  leaders  of  the  Tory 
party,  though  hitherto  the  Fortnightly  had  not  been 
avowedly   a   party   publication.     I    remember   meeting 


TORY    JOURNALISM    AND   LITERATURE.    245 

in  the  street  Chapman,  the  pubHsher,  who  asked  me  if 
I  did  not  think  it  a  very  good  idea.  Of  course,  I  said 
yes,  and  I  suppose  he  found  the  money,  as  Escott  did 
give  the  dinner,  and  entertained  Lord  SaUsbury,  Sir 
Stafford  Northcote,  and  some  of  their  principal  col- 
leagues at  a  sumptuous  banquet,  which  I  hope  had  the 
desired  effect. 

Neither  to  the  National  nor  to  the  Fortnightly  were 
my  contributions  mainly  political.  I  wrote  on  sporting 
and  literary  subjects  as  well,  about  shooting  and  natural 
history,  about  Oxford,  about  Chawton  and  Jane  Austen, 
about  Gilbert  White  and  Selborne  ;  but  when  I  began 
to  write  for  Sir  James  Knowles  in  the  Nineteenth,  I  was 
practically  almost  restricted  to  politics.  Mr.  Knowles, 
as  he  was  then,  invited  myself  and  one  or  two  others, 
Oxford  friends,  to  contribute  ;  and  I  remember  one  of 
them,  a  man  of  great  humour,  who,  not  being  a  public 
writer  himself,  was  much  pleased  with  the  implied  dis- 
tinction, considering  what  a  future  generation  would 
say  of  us  when  they  saw  our  names  in  the  Nineteenth, 
and  exclaiming  with  great  glee  :  *'  '  Ah  !  '  they'll  say  ; 
'  they  must  have  been  men  of  mark  :  they  must  have 
been  men  of  mark.'  *'  Knowles,  I  think,  regarded 
myself  as  a  reasonably  competent  exponent  of  modern 
Toryism,  and  with  sufficient  knowledge  of  our  Parlia- 
mentary history  to  be  able  to  write  on  party  politics 
when  anything  like  a  crisis  or  a  novel  situation  occurred. 
For  a  long  time  almost  all  my  articles  bore  on  some 
phase  of  the  party  system.  At  times,  of  course,  I  took 
a  wider  range.  An  article,  for  instance,  on  *'  European 
Coalitions  against  England ''  appeared  in  May,  1896, 
and  in  a  much  earlier  number  of  the  Nineteenth  I  re- 
viewed, at  Mr.  Knowles's  request,  the  political  novels 


246  TORY    MEMORIES. 

of  Lord  Beaconsfield.  Ten  years  ago  I  wrote  an  article 
entitled  ''  The  Good  Sense  of  the  English  People/*  and  I 
mention  it  now  because  recent  events  have  gone  so  far 
to  justify  it.  I  pointed  out  that  this  same  good  sense 
which  had  often  intervened  at  critical  periods  with  the 
best  effect  was  liable  to  be  confused  by  cross  issues  and 
subordinate  controversies,  which  are  now  much  more 
numerous  than  they  used  to  be.  '*  There  is  no  saying 
what  effect  may  be  produced  by  the  formation  of  a 
Parliamentary  Labour  Party  appealing  to  the  support 
of  the  artisans  on  general  grounds  without  compelling 
their  acceptance  of  any  rigid  code  of  articles.  We  know 
that  the  leaders  of  a  party  which  has  been  returned  upon 
general  principles  may  afterwards  use  their  power  for 
the  promotion  of  particular  objects  not  originally  con- 
templated by  their  followers,  who,  even  if  willing,  are 
not  always  able  to  offer  any  effectual  resistance.'* 
(March,  1895.) 

Such  was  my  own  prophecy  just  eleven  years  before 
it  was  fulfilled. 

Sir  James  Knowles  was  an  indefatigable  editor,  and 
the  result  of  his  exertions  was  seen  in  the  great  popu- 
larity which  the  Nineteenth  Century  immediately  com- 
manded. The  last  article  which  I  wrote  for  him  was  on 
Conservative  organisation  and  the  agricultural  labourer. 
I  wished  to  point  out  that  there  was  yet  time  for  the 
aristocracy  to  say  to  the  peasantry,  *'  We  will  be  your 
leaders.'*  I  shall  have  more  to  say  about  this  in  an- 
other chapter.  The  article  was  a  good  deal  noticed,  and 
an  enthusiastic  gentleman  in  Lincolnshire  wrote  to  me 
to  say  that  it  ought  to  be  reprinted  as  a  pamphlet,  and 
sent  to  every  landowner  in  the  kingdom.  As  he  him- 
self is  a  large  proprietor  who  has  given  much  attention 


TORY    JOURNALISM   AND    LITERATURE.    247 

to  the  subject,  his  appreciation  was  worth  something, 
but  what  he  added  was  worth  more  as  showing  the  diffi- 
culty of  arousing  the  EngHsh  country  gentlemen  to  a 
sense  of  their  situation,  and  of  the  dangers  by  which 
they  are  encompassed.  He  said  he  had  made  several 
attempts  himself  to  induce  the  gentry  to  form  some 
kind  of  combination  for  the  purpose  of  supplying  the 
peasantry  with  land,  in  order  to  prevent  its  being  taken 
by  force.  But  it  was  the  voice  of  one  crying  in  the 
wilderness.  Nobody  would  take  the  trouble  to  go  into 
the  question  :  things  would  last  their  time,  and  so  forth. 
So  it  is,  so  it  has  been,  and  so,  I  suppose,  it  always  will 
be.  It  is  too  soon  as  yet,  I  hope,  to  say  to  the  terri- 
torial class,  *'  Your  house  is  left  unto  you  desolate." 
But  if  their  eyes  are  not  speedily  opened  to  the  signs  of 
the  times  it  will  not  be  too  soon  much  longer. 

I  forgot  to  mention  that  in  the  Fortnightly  Review  I 
wrote  an  article  styled,  ''  The  County  System,"  calling 
attention  to  the  many  merits  of  that  system.  But, 
unhappily,  it  did  not  prevent  Lord  Salisbury  from 
introducing  his  County  Government  Bill. 

I  knew  something  of  Mrs.  Riddell,  the  authoress  of 
**  George  Geith."  In  the  year  1866  she  started  a  Tory 
magazine,  and  inaugurated  it,  as  was  then  the  universal 
custom,  by  a  dinner  to  contributors.  I  dined  at  her 
house  in  company  with  James  Hannay  and  many  others 
who  scented  plunder ;  but  I  am  afraid  there  was  more 
disappointment  than  satisfaction  in  the  end.  The  title 
of  the  new  periodical  was  the  St.  James's  Magazine, 
and  we  all  wished  it  success,  for  Mrs.  Riddell  was  a  very 
agreeable  and  handsome  woman  ;  but  there  were  too 
many  monthlies  of  the  old-fashioned  stamp  to  allow  room 
for  another  unless  seasoned  by  some  striking  novelty. 


248  TORY   MEMORIES. 

Several  efforts  were  made  to  resuscitate  Fraser. 
Mr.  Froude  took  it  in  hand,  and  I  had  a  talk  with 
him  one  day  when  George  Lawrence  (Guy  Living- 
stone) came  in,  whom  I  had  never  seen  since  the  old 
Union  days  at  Oxford,  when  he  ''  fleshed  his  maiden 
sword,''  as  he  expressed  it,  on  some  luckless  Radical 
undergraduate  who  had  offended  him.  Froude,  as  I 
have  said,  fell  in  with  my  ideas  about  Bolingbroke  and 
the  Tories  ;  but  he  did  not  stay  long  on  that  magazine. 
Principal  Tulloch,  who  succeeded  him,  was  very  hopeful. 
He  spoke  in  one  of  his  letters  of  having  secured  some 
very  valuable  contributors  and  very  interesting  articles. 
But  it  was  no  use.  The  old  Fraser ^  the  Fraser  of  Parker, 
the  Fraser  of  Whyte-Melville,  of  Digby  Grand, 
Kate  Coventry,  and  ''  The  Interpreter ''  ;  the 
Fraser  of  '*  Friends  in  Council  '*  and  ''  John 
HaUfax,''  was  dead.  It  had  once  stood  on  nearly 
if  not  quite  as  high  a  level  as  Blackwoody  and  in 
the  monthly  notices  of  periodical  literature  which  ap- 
peared in  the  newspapers  of  fifty  years  ago,  they  were 
always  named  together — Blackwood  first  and  Fraser 
second,  both  on  a  higher  platform  than  any  of  the  other 
magazines.  Blackwood  has  retained  its  place  and  re- 
tained its  specialities.  In  a  circular  issued  last  December 
it  is  stated  that  *'  for  ninety  years  Blackwood  has  been 
the  same  outspoken,  hypocrisy-hating,  pretence-exposing 
organ,  and  its  individuahty  is  as  marked  as  ever ;  *'  and 
this  is  quite  true.  It  has  an  idiosyncrasy  such  as  no 
other  magazine  can  lay  claim  to.  My  own  memory  of 
Blackwood  as  a  contributor  goes  back  about  five-and- 
twenty  years,  and  during  the  whole  of  that  period  I 
have  been,  I  may  say,  a  fairly  frequent  contributor 
to  the  great  Tory  magazine. 


TORY  JOURNALISM  AND  LITERATURE.    249 

In  the  Monthly  Review,  established  by  Mr.  Murray 
in  1 90 1,  I  wrote  last  year  (1906)  an  article  on  *'  County 
Magistrates,"  in  which  I  pointed  out  some  of  the  in- 
conveniences that  might  arise  from  the  abolition  of  the 
old  qualifications.  I  only  mention  this  because  I  see 
that  the  present  Lord  Chancellor  has  already  had  reason 
to  complain  of  the  abuses  which  I  then  predicted. 

My  personal  acquaintance  with  men  of  letters  and 
editors  has  not  been  very  extensive.  My  old  friend 
Coulton,  who  introduced  me  to  political  journalism,  I 
have  already  mentioned.  Dr.  Smith,  the  editor  of  the 
Quarterly,  I  knew  very  well,  too.  He  used  to  say  that 
he  liked  to  have  articles  from  me  in  the  summer,  for  then 
he  knew  he  would  have  one  article  he  could  rely 
upon  for  the  October  number  which  would  give  him  no 
trouble  and  not  interrupt  his  holiday.  This  was  a  high 
compliment,  much  the  same  as  Townshend,  the  editor 
of  the  Spectator,  paid  to  Lomer,  the  Rambler.  ''Mr. 
Lomer's  leaders,"  he  said  to  a  mutual  friend,  ''are  the 
only  ones  I  never  read  before  they  go  to  press."  Dr. 
Smith  was  a  capital  editor  to  get  on  with  :  under  him 
one  never  had  any  trouble  about  proofs  and  revises, 
and  second  and  third  revises.  He  was  a  hospitable  man, 
too,  and  I  remember  some  pleasant  parties  at  his  house. 
I  met  there  Dr.  Rutherford,  Headmaster  of  Westminster, 
and  his  wife,  a  very  pretty  and  agreeable  woman,  whom 
I  sat  next  to  at  dinner.  As  she  was  quite  enthusiastic 
about  the  very  gentlemanly  appearance  of  the  West- 
minster boys,  I  reminded  her  of  the  sobriquet  by 
which  Westminster  boys  were  formerly  known,  and  of 
what  Dickens  said  about  them.  She  knew  both,  but 
threw  them  off  as  inventions  of  the  enemy,  which  they 
very  likely  were. 


250  TORY    MEMORIES. 

At  the  same  house  I  met  Lord  Edmond  Fitz- 
maurice,  and  had  some  interesting  conversations  with 
him  about  Lord  Shelburne,  whose  *'  Life ''  he  had 
written.  I  asked  him,  in  particular,  whether  he  had 
ever  heard  that  Mr.  DisraeH  had  access  to  the  papers 
at  Lansdowne  House,  which  he  had  used  himself  in 
his  biography.  I  pointed  out  to  him  what  I  don't 
think  he  had  remarked  before  :  the  singular  coinci- 
dence there  was  between  passages  in  *'  Sybil ''  and 
Shelburne's  Autobiography.  Shelburne  here  speaks 
repeatedly  of  the  ''  false  government ''  introduced  by 
the  House  of  Hanover,  and  says  that  in  George  HL's 
time  it  was  worn  out.  Mr.  Disraeli  says  :  "  Lord 
Shelburne  adopted  from  the  first  the  Bolingbroke 
system — a  real  royalty  in  lieu  of  chief  magistracy,  a 
permanent  alliance  with  France  and  a  plan  of  commer- 
cial freedom.  Lord  Shelburne's  idea  was  that  the 
Crown  should  trust  to  the  rectitude  of  its  own  measures 
to  secure  a  general  conviction  of  its  good  intentions, 
and  under  this  conviction  to  restore  the  constitution." 
That  is  to  say,  there  was  to  be  no  more  party,  and  the 
King  was  to  choose  his  own  Ministers  from  among  the 
best  men  of  all  parties.  This  in  Lord  Shelburne's 
opinion  was  *'  the  old  constitution  "  which  was  over- 
thrown at  the  Revolution.  All  through  Lord  Beacons- 
field's  political  writings  we  find  this  idea  constantly 
recurring,  and  with  such  verbal  similarity  as  to  per- 
suade one  that  he  must  have  seen  or  heard  of  these 
autobiographical  fragments  before  he  wrote  '*  Con- 
ingsby "  and  *'  Sybil."  Lord  Edmond  Fitzmaurice 
admitted  that  the  coincidence  was  very  striking,  but 
said  there  was  nothing  known  in  the  family  of  Lord 
Beaconsfield's  having  seen  these  papers. 


TORY  JOURNALISM  AND  LITERATURE.    251 

I  also  asked  him  about  Lord  Shelburne  and  Junius. 
Lord  Shelburne  said  in  the  year  1805  that  he  knew 
Junius,  and  that  the  real  author  had  never  been  named 
or  even  suspected.  Sir  PhiHp  Francis  had  never  been 
named  before  that  date.  But  Lord  Edmond  Fitz- 
maurice  did  not  seem  to  think  that  his  grandfather 
meant  Sir  Philip  Francis  when  he  said  he  knew 
Junius. 

In  thinking  of  the  editors  I  have  known  inti- 
mately, the  joyous  and  cheery  countenance  of  Sir  J. 
Knowles  at  once  rises  up  before  me.  I  knew  him  when 
he  lived  at  Clapham,  before  the  Nineteenth  Century  was 
started.  When  I  went  more  into  Society  than  I  do  at 
present,  I  used  to  meet  him  everywhere.  He  was  al- 
ways in  evidence.  Nobody  ever  saw  Knowles  sitting 
silent  at  a  dinner  table,  or  standing  alone  with  his  back 
to  the  wall  at  a  reception.  To  the  sterling  qualities 
which  made  him  so  successful  in  business  and  in  litera- 
ture, he  added  a  fund  of  good  spirits  and  sprightly 
small  talk  which  never  deserted  him,  and  if  you  saw  a 
group  of  men  enjoying  a  good  laugh  in  the  corner  of  a 
drawing-room,  nine  times  out  of  ten  you  would  find 
Knowles  in  the  centre  of  it.  He  was  what  I  should  call 
a  sympathetic  editor,  and  if  he  refused  an  article,  he 
always  took  care  to  show  that  he  had  considered  the 
matter,  and  never  wrote  in  the  short  and  rather  abrupt 
style  in  which  some  editors  express  their  so-called 
regrets,  etc. 

Of  all  the  editors  whom  I  have  known  personally, 
I  knew  Hannay  the  best.  But  during  the  years  that  he 
edited  the  Edinburgh  Evening  Courant,  he,  of  course, 
lived  in  Edinburgh,  and  I  no  longer  saw  him  two  or  three 
times  a  week.     But  his  heart  was  in  London  all  the  time 


252  TORY    MEMORIES. 

with  his  old  associates,  in  whose  company  he  had  so 
often  heard  the  chimes,  so  often  shared  the  tavern 
bowl,  so  often  discoursed  of  great  old  houses,  and 
great  gentlemen  ancient  and  modern,  till  the  doors  were 
closed.  For  such  were  his  favourite  subjects,  and  it  was 
good  to  hear  him  talk  of  Pontius  Pilate  or  Felix,  '*  great 
Roman  gentlemen,''  and  wonder  what  such  men  really 
thought  of  Christianity.  But,  as  with  the  old  Scottish 
lawyer  described  in  *'  Guy  Mannering,"  the  practice  of 
mixing  wine  and  revelry  with  serious  business  still  sur- 
vived, so  with  Hannay,  himself  a  Scotsman,  the  genial 
tradition  usually  occurred  to  him  in  explanation  of 
any  mischance  in  the  C  our  ant  office.  I  used  to  send  him 
leaders  from  London,  and  one  night,  I  am  told,  he  rushed 
into  the  room  where  several  men  were  at  work,  hold- 
ing between  his  thumb  and  first  finger  about  a  third 
of  a  column.  "  We  can't  see  the  public  on  this,"  he 
cried.  *'  Old  K says  the  subject  won't  bear  fur- 
ther  expansion,   which   simply   means   that   H is 

waiting  for  him  at  the  Gray's  Inn  Coffee-house." 

Sidney  Low,  who  edited  the  St.  James's  Gazette  after 
Greenwood,  had  long  been  a  friend  of  mine ;  and  after 
I  left  off  night  work  at  the  Standard  I  think  he  took  my 
place.  I  always  thought  him  a  very  good  writer  of 
English  prose,  and  his  recent  letters  from  India  place 
him  very  high  among  the  masters  of  the  craft.  With 
my  old  friend  Mr.  Jeyes,  who  was  assistant  editor,  I 
worked  for  many  years  in  the  most  complete  harmony, 
and  always  found  him,  at  all  times  of  the  day  and  night, 
the  same  genial,  cheerful,  and  amusing  fellow  work- 
man. It  was  in  great  measure  owing  to  his  encourage- 
ment that  I  undertook  these  '*  Memories,"  and  I  am 
indebted  to  him  for  many  suggestions  with  regard  to 


TORY  JOURNALISM  AND  LITERATURE.    253 

the  scope  and  manner  of  them.  I  had  enjoyed  so  many 
opportunities  of  proving  the  soundness  of  his  judgment 
in  Hterary  matters  that  there  is  hardly  a  hint  which  he 
threw  out  which  I  have  not  more  or  less  acted  upon. 
I  have  reserved  to  the  last  any  mention  of  Mr. 
William  Blackwood,  and  it  must  be  held  to  be  for  the 
same  reason  that  the  last  place  in  a  review  or  magazine 
is  often  the  place  of  honour.  I  have  always  found  him 
the  best  of  friends  and  the  best  of  editors.  He  takes 
infinite  pains  to  give  the  best  possible  shape  to  his 
articles,  and  makes  every  allowance  for  contributors 
who  may  be  writing  from  a  distance  or  against  time. 
The  services  which  the  Blackwoods  have  rendered  to  the 
Tory  party  should  be  gratefully  remembered  by  all  its 
members,  high  or  low,  and  entitle  their  magazine  to  be 
bracketed  with  the  Quarterly  Review  as  one  of  the  two 
great  literary  organs  which  have  upheld  the  Conservative 
and  constitutional  cause  in  this  country  for  nearly  a 
century  with  equal  abihty,  equal  fideUty,  and  equal 
conscientiousness. 


CHAPTER    XVI. 

TORY   DEMOCRACY. 

Lord  Randolph  Churchill's  Definition  of  Tory  Democracy — What  Lord 
Beaconsfield  meant  by  it — Toryism  in  the  Eighteenth  Century — 
Peasantry  and  Gentry — Tory  Proclivities  of  the  Artisan  Class — 
The  Peasantry  and  "  Methodies." 

''Tory  Democracy  ''  is,  as  I  have  explained  elsewhere^ 
a  contradiction  in  terms — a  solecism.  "  Democracy/'  in 
the  proper  sense  of  the  word,  means  a  form  of  government, 
not  a  class  of  the  community.  It  would  be  rash  to 
assert  that  it  was  never  used  in  the  latter  sense  by 
Lord  Beaconsfield  himself ;  but  it  is,  nevertheless, 
a  very  misleading  use  of  the  word.  ''  Democracy,'' 
properly  understood,  means  the  government  of  the 
few  by  the  many,  the  government  of  those  best  fitted 
to  rule  by  those  who  are  the  least  so.  Lord  Beacons- 
field never  meant  this,  and  it  is  impossible  that  he 
could  have  done,  for  Toryism  means  exactly  the  reverse. 
The  definition  of  ''  Tory  democracy  *'  given  in  the 
''  Life  of  Lord  Randolph  Churchill  '*  may  be  a  good 
description  of  Toryism,  but  certainly  not  of  democracy. 
"  Tory  democracy  '*  means,  we  are  told,  ''  ancient 
permanent  institutions  becoming  the  instruments  of 
far-reaching  social  reform."  Good ;  but  this  is  not 
democracy.  If  the  representatives  of  the  people  in 
the  House  of  Commons  would  only  give  up  clamouring 
for  the   destruction  of  these   ancient  institutions,  this 

254 


TORY    DEMOCRACY.  255 

ideal,  which  was  probably  Lord  Beaconsfield's  own, 
might  possibly  be  realised.  But  it  is  naturally  the 
game  of  the  Radicals  to  prevent  any  good  un- 
derstanding being  arrived  at  between  the  Tories  and 
the  people.  When  a  Tory  speaker  on  one  occasion  was 
beginning  to  be  listened  to  by  an  excited  Radical  mob, 
a  shrewd  agitator,  seeing  that  matters  were  not  going 
well,  said  to  a  boy  standing  near,  ''  Why  don't  you 
throw  a  stone  at  him  ?  '*  The  boy  was  only  too  de- 
lighted with  the  mischief.  The  stone  crashed  through 
a  window  just  behind  the  speaker's  head,  and  the  whole 
effect  of  his  address  was  lost.  Radicals  who  cherish 
the  policy  of  destruction  represent  themselves  to 
the  people  as  the  only  party  capable  of  effecting  these 
''  far-reaching  social  reforms,''  and  then  when  they  are 
returned  to  Parliament  in  adequate  strength  for  that 
purpose,  what  becomes  of  our  "  ancient  and  per- 
manent institutions  ?  "  They  use  the  power  which  they 
gain  by  posing  as  social  reformers  for  the  purposes  of 
political  revolution.  I  don't  blame  them.  The  sincere 
Radical  who  sees  the  regeneration  of  England  in  the 
reaHsation  of  his  own  ideas  may  employ  for  that 
end  the  wisdom  of  the  serpent.  It  is  only  to  be 
asked  that  his  tactics  should  be  fully  understood. 

The  distinction  which  Lord  Beaconsfield  drew 
between  popular  privileges  and  democratic  rights 
shows  the  trend  of  his  thoughts  on  this  subject.  His 
mind  was  running  on  the  Toryism  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  when  peasantry  and  artisans  alike,  farmers, 
country  gentlemen,  manufacturers,  and  shopkeepers, 
were,  as  a  rule,  Tories,  outnumbered  in  the  House 
of  Commons  by  the  nominees  of  Whig  boroughs, 
and  in  the  Lords,  of  course,  by  ''  the  Revolution  fami- 


256  TORY    MEMORIES. 

lies/'  but  jealous  of  the  oligarchy,  devoted  to  the 
Church,  and  haters  of  German  alliances.  Burke  him- 
self admitted  this  much. 

Lord  Beaconsfield  believed  that  the  English  people 
on  the  whole — all  below  the  higher  aristocracy — would,  if 
properly  led,  be  on  the  side  of  the  Church  and  the  Crown. 
At  all  events,  he  thought  the  experiment  worth  trying. 
But  he  never  meant  to  establish  democracy  as  the 
form  of  government  in  which  our  foreign  and  domestic 
policy  should  be  dictated  by  the  masses.  Rethought  the 
people  could  safely  be  trusted  with  political  power  under 
the  guidance  of  those  to  whom  they  had  long  been  accus- 
tomed to  look  up,  and  that  in  voting  for  one  who  they 
thought  would  make  the  best  member  of  Parliament  they 
would  not  be  voting  for  one  who  wished  to  overthrow 
what  they  themselves  desired  to  preserve.  In  this  calcu- 
lation, however,  there  were  several  factors  left  out,  which 
Lord  Beaconsfield  either  did  not,  or  would  not,  recognise 
In  one  of  his  novels  he  speaks  of  ^'  agitation  "  as  a  newly- 
developed  political  force  of  evil  omen.  Did  he  not  see 
that  a  weapon  which  had  once  been  so  successful  was  not 
likely  to  be  readily  laid  aside.  Suppose  even  four- 
fifths  of  the  British  people  to  be  satisfied  with  the 
existing  constitution  and  desirous  of  no  further  changes, 
would  the  residuum,  the  remaining  one-iif th,  let  them 
alone  ?  We  all  know  what  small  minorities  can  do 
when  directed  by  persevering  energy,  and  corresponding 
ability ;  and  these  qualities  are  never  likely  to  be 
wanting  in  any  small  body  of  men  who  stand  aloof  from 
the  majority,  as  they  set  original  ideals  before  them- 
selves, and  by  the  very  fact  of  their  differing  from  their 
fellows  attest  their  own  powers  of  independent  thought. 
But  it  is  waste  of  words  to  dwell  on  so  trite  a  fact  as  that 


TORY    DEMOCRACY.  257 

the  greatest  events  are  often  the  work  of  a  few  zealots, 
and  proceed  from  very  small  beginnings. 

If  you  question  a  labouring  man  about  politics,  it 
is  quite  possible  that  he  may  hold  his  tongue,  but  his 
silence  will  be  some  clue  to  his  thoughts.  If  he  did 
not  agree  with  his  interrogator,  he  might  not  well  know 
how  to  express  his  dissent  in  a  civil  manner.  But 
I  don't  think  he  would  say  what  he  didn't  believe 
as  a  way  of  getting  over  the  difficulty.  Such,  at  least, 
is  my  own  experience.  I  have  always  found,  as  far 
as  my  own  memory  extends,  that  the  Radicalism,  if 
we  are  to  call  it  so,  of  the  working  man  sprang  from 
no  hostihty  to  the  Church  or  the  gentry,  but  simply 
from  the  desire  of  bettering  his  own  condition.  If  this 
could  be  done  without  injury  to  the  gentry  or  the  Church 
he  would  be  perfectly  content. 

Between  the  peasantry  and  the  gentry  there  is  no 
purely  class  jealousy  such  as  is  so  potent  an  element  in 
Radicalism  generally.  I  have  talked  a  good  deal  with 
labourers  at  different  times,  and  I  have  never  heard  them 
speak  disrespectfully  of  clergymen  or  landlords  as  a  class. 
Individuals  among  them  there  might  be,  of  course, 
who  were  unpopular.  But  my  conviction  is  that  the 
natural  sympathies  of  the  peasantry,  if  allowed  free  play, 
would  be  in  favour  of  those  under  whom  they  and  their 
fathers  have  lived  for  so  many  generations.  Such  are 
my  memories  of  what  the  English  peasantry  were  when 
I  lived  more  among  them  than  I  have  done  of  late. 
Since  that  time,  no  doubt,  there  has  been  some  change. 
Ill  tongues  have  come  between  them  and  their  ancient 
friends,  and  whether  the  effect  of  this  can  be  effaced 
or  not  is  the  question  of  the  future. 

The  artisan  class,  who  know  very  little  of  the  rural 

R 


258  TORY   MEMORIES. 

gentry,  except  what  they  read  in  Radical  newspapers, 
have  at  times  shown  very  strong  Tory  procHvities.  The 
clergy  in  the  towns  have  great  influence  with  them,  and 
I  don't  think  the  Church  of  England  would  be  in  any 
danger  if  the  artisans'  sympathies  were  not  interfered 
with  by  appeals  to  his  material  interests.  The  political 
Dissenters  know  this,  and  they  form  a  kind  of  mutual 
insurance  society  with  the  Trades  Unions,  so  that  the 
working  man  can't  vote  for  the  one  without  voting  for 
the  other.  If  by  Tory  democracy  is  meant  a  ''  con- 
federation "  of  the  minor  aristocracy,  the  mercantile 
and  professional  classes,  the  artisans  and  the  peasantry, 
in  favour  of  "  ancient  and  permanent  institutions,'^ 
my  own  memory  does  not  supply  me  with  material 
for  the  formation  of  any  strong  opinion  as  to  whether 
it  is  practicable,  though  the  question  is  not  unlikely 
to  be  put  to  the  test  at  no  distant  future.  But  I 
think  if  such  a  combination  were  possible,  it  would  re- 
quire a  different  leader  from  Lord  Randolph  Churchill, 
whose  attitude  in  Parliament  has  been  attributed 
by  his  son  to  very  mixed  motives.  For  the  leader 
of  such  a  party,  one  who  can  rekindle  the  smoulder- 
ing loyalty  of  the  rural  population,  and  persuade 
the  landowners  to  make  such  sacrifices  as  are 
necessary  to  render  it  permanent,  must  be  a  man 
of  transparent  sincerity  as  well  as  of  enthusiastic 
energy.  The  difficulties  he  would  have  to  cope  with 
seem  to  me  at  this  moment  almost  insurmountable.  But 
the  mind  of  the  people  does  not  lie  upon  the  surface. 
Nobody  could  have  foretold  the  immense  majority  which 
started  up  at  the  call  of  Mr.  Pitt,  and  overthrew  a  party 
whose  roots  were  so  deeply  seated  in  the  soil.  Nobody 
foresaw  the  sweeping    flood    of    public    opinion  which. 


TORY    DEMOCRACY.  259 

once    let  loose,    overthrew   the    old  constitution    fifty 

years  afterwards. 

Among  my  Tory  memories  one  is  that  half  a  century 
ago  the  rural  population  looked  up  with  reverence  to 
the  Crown  ;  and  it  is  possible  that,  if  threatened,  they 
would  rally  round  it  again  as  they  did  in  1784.  One 
thing,  at  all  events,  I  recollect  very  distinctly ;  and 
that  is  that  down  to  very  recent  times  Dissenters  were 
regarded  by  the  peasantry  in  general  with  a  very  un- 
favourable eye.  I  can  testify  to  the  survival  of  this 
feeling  only  twenty  years  ago  in  more  English  counties 
than  one.  It  is  a  legacy  from  the  eighteenth  century, 
and  wherever  it  still  operates  is  an  element  to  be  reckoned 
with  in  the  labourer's  political  creed. 

Of  its  existence  on  a  large  scale  at  the  date  above- 
mentioned  I  have  clear  personal  recollections,  and  I 
am  quite  certain  that  at  that  time  had  the  "  democracy  " 
— if  I  must  call  it  so — been  appealed  to  on  any  question 
in  which  the  Church  and  the  Dissenters  were  at  variance 
— I  mean  if  this  had  been  the  sole  issue  before  them — 
a  large  majority  would  have  been  found  upon  the  Tory 
side.  How  it  may  be  now  I  cannot  say.  I  am  con- 
cerned only  with  what  I  can  remember  ;  and  do  I  not 
remember  many  a  sturdy  villager  who  was  always  ready 
with  a  gibe  at  ''  the  Methodies,''  as  they  were  called, 
and  many  a  small  freeholder,  as  independent  as  any 
man  need  be,  who,  if  asked  before  a  coming  election 
how  he  should  vote,  would  reply,  with  a  twinkle  in  his 
eye,  *'  I  stan'  by  the  Church  '*  ?  As  far  as  such  men 
as  these  represent  the  democracy  at  the  present  day, 
Tory  democracy — I  use  the  term  under  protest — may 
not  be  altogether  a  mere  dream,  though  Mr.  Balfour 
is  leader  of  the  party. 


26o  TORY    MEMORIES. 

There  was  a  tradition — a  most  unfounded  one,  I 
needn't  say — that  Dissenters  were  not  to  be  trusted. 
The  same  prevailed  in  regard  to  Roman  CathoHcs,  who 
by  certain  classes  of  the  community  were,  and  still 
are,  all  set  down  as  Jesuits.  I  remember  hearing  a 
distinguished  London  surgeon,  member  of  a  class 
usually  pretty  free  from  theological  bias,  utter  rather 
too  pointed  a  joke  on  this  subject.  Joke  though  it 
was,  it  is  evidence  of  the  survival  of  the  old  tradi- 
tion.* If  our  ''  ancient  and  permanent  institutions  '' 
are  to  be  saved  by  Tory  democracy,  Tory  democracy 
will  find  its  most  powerful  ally  in  the  Church  of  England. 

*  See  Cobbett's  "Cottage  Economy,"  p.  ii8. 


CHAPTER    XVII. 

TORY   SPORTSMEN. 

The  Late  Lord  Stanley  of  Alderley — A  Mahometan  Supporter  of  the 
Church  of  England — Coot-shooting  at  Alderley — George  Baden - 
Powell — Southey's  Small  Band  of  Admirers — A  Writing  Contest 
with  Lord  Stanley — Trespassers — Lord  Stanley's  Eccentricities — 
Solitary  Shoots  —  Wind  and  Rain  —  A  Shooting  Bishop  —  The 
Editor  of  the  Edinburgh  Review — The  Dowager  Lady  Stanley 
— Her  Treatment  of  a  Fellow-Passenger — More  about  Shooting — 
A  Murderous  Ass — Three  Welsh  Parsons — At  a  Welsh  Manor 
House — A  Welsh  Dissenter  and  his  Little  Superstitions — Colonel 
Talbot — ^A  Reminiscence  of  the  Fourteenth  Earl  of  Derby — Lord 
Stanley  of  Alderley's  Mastiffs — A  Tenants'  Ball — Morris  Dancing — 
Making  Converts — A   Compliment  from  Lord  Strathnairn. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  in  any  well-regulated  mind  that 
one  of  the  notes  of  Toryism  is  a  love  of  field-sports. 
At  one  time  of  day  it  was  a  reproach  to  the  Tory  party 
that  they  consisted  so  largely  of  fox-hunters.  Most 
country  gentlemen  were  Tories,  and  most  country  gen- 
tlemen were  sportsmen.  There  was  just  that  element  of 
truth  in  the  charge  brought  against  this  respectable  body 
of  politicians.  We  are  now  about  to  visit  scenes  where 
the  spirit  of  Toryism  prevailed,  if  not  the  letter,  and 
where  the  pursuit  of  game  and  the  support  of  the  Church 
of  England,  where  such  support  was  very  much  needed, 
went  hand  in  hand — I  am  speaking  of  Wales,  and  the 
estates  of  Lord  Stanley  of  Alderley  in  Anglesey.  That 
branch  of  the  Stanley  family  were  Whigs,  and  I  suppose 
that  is  what  the  late  lord  would  have  called  himself 

261 


262  TORY    MEMORIES. 

had  he  called  himself  anything  ;  but  in  practice  he  was 
as  good  a  Tory  as  one  could  wish  to  see.  He  himself,  as 
is  well  known,  was  a  Mahometan,  which  he  said  was  a 
religion  **  you  could  live  up  to.*'  But  inquiring  at  Con- 
stantinople, on  succeeding  to  the  family  property,  what 
was  his  duty  to  the  Church  of  England,  he  was  in- 
structed always  to  support  the  established  religion  of 
the  country  in  which  he  found  himself,  and  this  Lord 
Stanley  did  to  the  utmost  of  his  ability.  In  building 
churches  and  schools,  and  helping  the  poorer  clergy  in  a 
substantial  manner,  there  were  few  of  his  order  who  sur- 
passed or  even  equalled  him.  Whether  at  Penrh6s, 
his  seat  near  Holyhead,  or  at  Alderley  in  Cheshire,  he 
was  a  regular  attendant  at  the  parish  church.  He 
regarded  the  Church  of  England  as  a  great  and  beneficent 
institution  ;  but  this  did  not  prevent  him  from  sym- 
pathising largely  with  his  co-religionists  in  other  parts 
of  the  world ;  and  if  there  was  a  flaw  anywhere  in  his 
Tory  faith,  it  was  in  his  views  regarding  India  and  the 
rights  of  the  native  population.  But  he  seldom  talked 
on  such  subjects,  and  you  might  have  stayed  with  him 
for  a  month  without  ever  finding  out  what  he  thought 
about  them. 

I  made  his  acquaintance  through  the  press.  I  had 
written  an  article  in  the  5^.  James's  Gazette  about  wild 
pheasants,  and  Lord  Stanley  inquired  of  Greenwood 
the  name  of  the  author.  On  learning  who  it  was,  he  at 
once  sent  me  an  invitation  to  come  down  and  stay  with 
him  at  Alderley,  which,  of  course,  I  gladly  accepted. 
This  was  in  November,  and  I  had  one  day^s  shooting 
with  him  in  the  woods.  His  big  shoot  for  the  season 
was  over,  and  the  pheasants  were  rather  scarce  ;  but 
there  were  enough  to  put  my  skill  to  the  test,  and  he  was 


TORY    SPORTSMEN.  263 

so  far  satisfied  that  he  begged  me  to  stay  another  day 
and  help  to  shoot  the  coots  on  the  lake.  The  manner  of 
doing  it  was  this.  The  birds  lie  in  the  reeds  and  rushes 
under  the  banks,  and  the  shooters  go  out  into  the  middle 
of  the  lake  in  a  boat.  The  coots,  when  disturbed, 
iiy  across  the  water,  often  coming  well  overhead  and 
affording  good  sporting  shots,  their  flight  being  not 
unlike  that  of  a  black-cock's.  I  think  we  killed  twenty- 
three,  it  being  necessary  at  times  to  thin  them  down, 
as  they  drove  away  the  wild  fowl. 

From  this  time  forward  I  continued  to  see  a  good 
deal  of  Lord  Stanley.  In  the  following  year  I  went  to 
Alderley  in  September  for  partridge  shooting,  and 
afterwards  on  to  Penrhos,  where  he  had  a  party. 
Here,  as  I  have  said  in  an  earlier  chapter,  I  first  met 
George  Baden-Powell,  and  the  day  after  I  arrived 
he  and  another  man  and  myself  shot  twenty  -  five 
brace  of  partridges.  Baden-Powell  was  a  very  cheery 
man  in  a  country  house,  with  abundance  of  jokes 
always  ready.  Washington  Irving  says  that  the 
happiest  parties  are  those  in  which  the  jokes  are 
small  and  the  laughter  abundant.  At  Penrhos  we 
often  realised  the  truth  of  this  remark. 

Lord  Stanley  himself  was  very  deaf,  and  at  dinner- 
time he  liked  to  have  ladies  whom  he  knew  well  sitting 
one  on  each  side  of  him,  to  tell  him  what  was  being 
talked  about.  There  were  only  a  few  people  staying  in 
the  house  on  the  occasion  of  my  first  visit;  but  I 
think  one  among  them  was  Mrs.  Charles  Stanley,  the 
sister-in-law  of  Dean  Stanley,  and  a  widow.  I  had  a 
good  deal  of  literary  conversation  with  her,  for  she 
was  fond  of  books  and  well  read  in  the  English 
poets.     I   happened  to  say  that  I  admired  Southey's 


264  TORY    MEMORIES. 

poems,  upon  which  she  replied  that  she  supposed  she 
and  I  and  the  Dean  were  the  only  three  people  left 
who  owned  to  an  affection  for  Southey;  she  herself 
was  very  fond  of  him,  and  the  Dean  especially 
admired  ''  The  Curse  of  Kehama,''  which  is  my  own 
favourite,  too. 

While  she  was  there  I  was  the  only  married  man 
among  the  shooters,  and  my  wife  therefore  the  only 
sportsman's  wife.  There  was  considerable  chaff  about 
what  a  sportsman's  wife  ought  to  be,  and  it  was  pro- 
posed that  Lord  Stanley  and  I  should  each  write  an 
article  on  the  subject  and  send  it  up  to  Greenwood  for 
the  St.  James's^  he  to  insert  the  one  he  liked  best.  They 
were  both  copied  out  by  someone  else  so  that  he  might 
not  recognise  the  handwriting,  and  unfortunately  he 
chose  mine — at  which  Lord  Stanley  was  for  the  moment, 
I  think,  really  annoyed.  But  to  Greenwood  it  was  the 
amateur  against  the  professional,  a  contest  which  usually 
has  the  same  ending.  I  remember  Mrs.  Charles  Stanley 
took  a  good  deal  of  interest  in  it,  and  always  addressed 
my  wife  in  future  as  ''  the  sportsman's  wife."  Lord 
Stanley,  who  was  an  ''  improving  "  landlord,  and  laid 
out  a  good  deal  of  money  on  farm-houses  and 
cottages,  had  a  fancy  for  getting  ladies  of  his  acquaint- 
ance to  give  him  their  photographs,  to  be  enlarged  and 
painted  on  panel  tiles  in  one  of  his  farmhouse  dairies. 
My  wife  figures  in  one  of  these  in  a  farmhouse  not  far 
from  the  South  Stack. 

It  was  near  this  spot,  too,  that  I  witnessed  an 
amusing  incident.  We  were  out  shooting,  and  the 
keeper  caught  two  trespassers,  who  were  getting  nuts 
or  blackberries,  or  mushrooms,  and  brought  them 
before     his    lordship,     who     immediately     began     to 


TORY    SPORTSMEN.  265 

examine  them.  His  deafness,  however,  prevented  him 
from  hearing  their  answers  very  distinctly.  *'  What, 
what  did  he  say  ?  "  turning  to  the  keeper.  *'  Did  he 
say  he  never  had  a  mother  ?  '*  *'  Ah,  my  lord,'*  growled 
the  man ;  ''  and  he  wouldn't  ha'  told  you  if  he  had  had." 
The  keeper  evidently  thought  that  the  boy's  natural 
taste  for  perjury,  like  Mr.  Winkle's,  would  induce  him 
to  deny  that  he  came  into  the  world  like  other  people, 
the  imputation  at  the  same  time  being  coupled  with  the 
curious  admission  that,  after  all,  it  might  have  been  so. 
The  boys,  of  course,  were  allowed  to  go  free  with  an 
admonition.  But  Lord  Stanley  was  accused  of  treating 
other  trespassers  less  mercifully.  An  old  lady  picking 
blackberries  not  very  far  from  where  some  partridges 
had  settled,  when  the  birds  got  up,  received  a  shot  in 
the  edge  of  her  ear  which  sent  her  off  squealing  up  the 
village  street,  screaming  that  the  *'  old  lord  "  had  shot 
her,  and  to  the  last  she  fully  believed  that  he  had  done 
it  on  purpose.  It  would  only  be  of  a  piece  with  other 
acts  of  Tory  tyranny,  which  doubtless  she  had  often 
heard  denounced  by  local  patriots. 

Sometimes  we  had  very  pleasant  house  parties  at 
Penrhos,  both  in  September  and  December.  Lord 
Stanley's  own  little  eccentricities  all  helped  to  enliven 
us.  Nobody  was  to  come  down  to  breakfast  on  Sunday 
morning  in  a  shooting  jacket ;  nobody  was  to  shirk 
coming  home  from  shooting  in  time  for  five  o'clock  tea; 
Nobody  was  to  make  himself  specially  agreeable  to  any 
given  lady,  young  or  old,  married  or  single,  on  pain  of 
being  charged  with  flirting,  a  crime  of  which  Lord 
Stanley  seemed  to  entertain  a  holy  horror.  I  myself, 
for  only  walking  up  and  down  the  terrace  in  front  of 
the  house  for  ten  minutes  before  dinner,  in  company 


266  TORY    MEMORIES. 

with  a  middle-aged  lady,  was  solemnly  warned  that  I 
was  suspected  of  this  grave  offence,  and  adjured  to  be 
more  careful  in  future.  Why,  with  these  ideas  in  his 
head,  he  filled  his  house  with  girls  and  men  and  women 
who,  when  the  shooting  was  over,  had  nothing  else  to 
do  but  that,  I  couldn't  understand.  There  was  no 
billiard-room.  Cards  Lord  Stanley  detested  ;  charades 
I'm  sure  he  would  have  abhorred  as  fit  only  for  such 
damsels  as,  to  use  his  own  words,  ''  did  not  pretend  to 
be  good.''  This  was  an  affectation  he  could  not  tolerate. 
Speaking  of  a  pretty  actress  whom  we  knew,  I  asked  if 
he  would  like  to  be  introduced  to  her.  ''  She  does  not 
pretend  to  be  good,  I  hope,  does  she  ?  "  Such  a  hypo- 
crite as  that  he  would  not  have  cared  to  be  acquainted 
with.  I  fancy  he  looked  at  flirting  through  much  the 
same  spectacles.  He  had,  moreover,  considerable  conver- 
sational powers  when  he  chose  to  exert  them.  He  had 
been  attache  at  Constantinople  with  Lord  Strangford ; 
and  he  told  us,  among  other  good  things,  that  Lord 
Strangford  wore  his  beard  so  long  that  when  he  wrote  it 
trailed  in  the  ink  and  described  patterns  on  the  paper. 

I  have  said  that  he  rarely  talked  politics,  and  he 
seldom  did;  but  he  read  the  political  articles  in  the 
St.  James's  Gazette  and  the  Nineteenth  Century  with 
avidity,  and  once  when  he  quartered  myself  and  his 
nephew  Arthur  Stanley,  then  some  twenty  years  of  age, 
at  one  of  his  farmhouses,  he  said,  half  in  joke  and  half 
in  earnest,  that  he  had  committed  him  to  me  because  of 
my  principles,  and  in  the  hope  that  they  might  prove 
infectious.  As  my  principles  were  strictly  Tory,  we 
want  no  further  evidence  about  Lord  Stanley's,  or  any 
further  justification  for  classing  Penrhos  and  Alderley 
among   my   Tory   memories.     His   lordship's   hopes   in 


TORY    SPORTSMEN.  267 

this  particular  instance  were  doomed  to  disappointment, 
for  his  nephew  parted  from  me  quite  uncontaminated 
with  the  Tory  views  which  I  was  intended  to  instil  into 
him.  He  is  now  member  for  the  Eddisbury  division 
of  Cheshire,  and  heir  to  the  barony  of  Alderley. 

Lady  Stanley  did  not  often  come  to  Penrhos  ;  but 
she  sometimes  did,  though  not  in  very  good  health. 
One  event  I  remember  in  connection  with  her — namely, 
that  poor  Mr.  Garnett  (Secretary  to  the  Board  of  Inland 
Revenue),  the  most  amiable  and  obliging  of  mankind, 
volunteered  to  drive  her  out  in  the  pony  chaise,  which 
by  some  mischance  he  upset — an  accident  which  her 
ladyship  persisted  was  no  accident  at  all,  but  done  on 
purpose. 

Of  course,  I  never  passed  a  fortnight  in  Anglesey 
without  plenty  of  rain  ;  but  the  weather  found  me  bad 
to  beat  in  those  days,  when  the  birds  were  plentiful. 
Three  times  going  out  with  one  other  man  was  I  left 
alone  in  the  rain  to  finish  the  day  with  the  keeper. 
One  deserter,  I  remember,  was  Lord  Granard,  who 
thought,  I  believe,  that  the  birds  were  not  plentiful 
enough  to  make  the  game  worth  the  candle,  and  he  left 
me  between  twelve  and  one  to  do  the  best  I  could  in  a 
cold,  drizzling  rain.  However,  I  persevered  and  made 
a  fair  bag  off  my  own  gun  considering  the  weather — 
eight  brace  and  some  rabbits — after  Lord  Granard  left. 
Another  day,  when  I  was  left  alone  almost  as  soon  as  we 
started,  I  returned  wet  through  with  eleven  brace.  And 
another  I  shall  never  forget  when  I  got  home  with  the 
water  streaming  down  my  back  under  my  clothes,  with 
nine  brace.  This  day  I  had  to  fight  not  only  the  rain, 
but  the  wind,  which  in  Anglesey  is  no  joke.  I  received 
the  congratulations  of  the  sporting  part  of  the  com- 


268  TORY    MEMORIES. 

munity  on  each  occasion  ;  but  I  think  Lord  Stanley's 
thoughts  took  a  different  direction.  He  said  I  was 
kiUing  his  keepers.  He  approved,  however,  of  my  con- 
servative taste  in  preferring  dogs  to  driving,  and  also 
of  my  liking  for  spaniels,  of  which  he  was  very  fond  him- 
self. I  recall  these  sporting  delights  because  I  owe  them 
to  my  political  principles,  and  they  are  essentially  Tory 
memories.  Toryism  has  brought  me  large  returns  in  the 
way  of  sport,  if  not  in  silver  and  gold  ! 

Talking  of  shooting  in  the  rain,  I  have  another 
reminiscence  of  the  pursuit  of  sport  under  the  same 
difficulties,  and  of  being  left  to  enjoy  it  alone,  which  I 
may  as  well  introduce  here.  This  was  at  Coghurst,  near 
Hastings,  where  I  was  shooting  with  Mr.  Ashburnham. 
It  was  late  in  the  season,  and  we  tried  for  a  few 
pheasants,  but  they  wouldn't  rise,  and  then  we  tried 
ferretting  for  rabbits,  but  they  wouldn't  bolt.  It 
was  now  raining  fast,  and  Mr.  Ashburnham  said  to 
me  that  I  could  go  on  if  I  hked  but  that  he  should 
go  home,  which  he  did.  I  stayed  on,  and  we — that 
is,  myself  and  a  couple  of  men — returned  through 
the  wood  by  the  way  we  came,  and  ferreted  all  the 
holes  once  again,  and,  curiously  enough,  this  time  the 
rabbits  bolted  freely.  I  shot  thirteen,  and  emerged 
from  the  wood  rather  triumphant. 

But  to  return  to  Penrhos.  Amongst  the  guests  I 
remember  the  Bishop  of  Bangor,  Dr.  Lloyd,  who  was  not 
only  a  prelate,  a  Tory,  and  a  scholar,  but  a  sportsman 
also,  and  he  came  out  shooting  with  us  in  a  happy 
mixture  of  venatic  and  episcopal  costume  which  was 
very  interesting.  He  was  not  at  all  a  bad  shot,  and  I 
thought  it  a  privilege  to  walk  by  his  side.  Dr.  Johnson, 
I  suppose,  would  have  been  shocked  at  such  a  spectacle  ; 


TORY   SPORTSMEN.  269 

but  though  a  straight  Tory  I  am  not  a  strait-laced  one  ; 
and  I  don't  see  why  Church  dignitaries  at  the  present 
day  should  not  follow  pointers  and  setters  as  their  pre- 
decessors followed  hawk  and  hound.  And  the  Bishop 
of  Bangor,  as  I  say,  was  a  scholar,  and  could,  no  doubt, 
have  construed  at  sight  either  Xenophon's  or  Oppian's 
Cynegetica,  if  he  had  been  ''  put  on."  It  may  be 
doubted  whether  the  Prior  of  Jervaulx  or  Archbishop 
Abbot  could  have  done  either.  I  had  not  shot  very 
well  that  day,  and  missed  two  or  three  rabbits  under 
the  Bishop's  nose ;  but  I  regained  my  lost  ground 
and  my  own  self-respect  in  the  evening  by  supplying 
him  with  a  quotation  from  Lucan  which  he  had  for- 
gotten. Lord  Stanley  was  fond  of  classical  quotations, 
but  he  did  not  know  that  one,  and  I  think  was  rather 
aggrieved  at  my  ostentation  in  quoting  so  little  known  a 
poet.  He  had  theories  of  his  own  about  disputed  pas- 
sages in  Virgil  such  as  '' Quisque  suos  patimur  manes'' 
and  Dido's  promise,  **  Quam  mihiquum  dederis  cumulatam 
morte  remittam."  The  fourth  ^Eneid  had  evidently 
made  a  great  impression  on  him,  and  he  referred  to  it 
in  the  House  of  Lords  more  than  once. 

Once  while  I  was  at  Penrhos  Mr.  Reeve,  the  editor 
of  the  Edinburgh  Review,  and  Mrs.  Reeve  came  to  stay 
for  a  few  days.  He  knew  an  old  friend  of  mine,  then 
Consul  at  Palermo,  who  had  for  many  years  been  a 
constant  contributor  to  the  Edinburgh — William  Stigant. 
He  said  he  was  a  very  useful  man,  knew  two  or  three 
literatures,  and  could  write  well,  but  he  was  always  dis- 
contented. ''  He  has  got,"  said  Mr.  Reeve,  ''  almost 
the  best  consulate  which  the  Government  have  to  give 
away,  the  pages  of  the  Edinburgh  are  always  open  to 
him,  and  yet  he  is  for  ever  grumbling."    I  who  knew  the 


270  TORY   MEMORIES. 

man  knew  this  to  be  true  ;  but  then  Stigant  was  an 
out-and-out  Liberal,  and  I  remember  very  well  when 
the  third  volume  of  Macaulay's  History  came  out  and 
we  read  on  the  concluding  page  that  it  might  come 
to  be  a  question  whether  it  would  not  be  necessary 
*'  to  sacrifice  liberty  in  order  to  save  civilisation/' 
Stigant  was  gloriously  indignant.  ''  What  can  he 
mean  by  it,  Hannay  ?  '*  he  exclaimed,  with  a  dark 
frown.  "  Oh,''  said  Hannay  cheerfully,  '*  there  can 
be  no  doubt  about  what  he  means.'' 

I  was  glad  to  make  the  acquaintance  of  Mr.  Reeve, 
and  it  led  afterwards  to  my  becoming  a  contributor  to 
the  Edinburgh  myself.  If  it  should  be  asked  how  I,  a 
strict  Tory,  could  write  for  an  equally  strict  Whig 
review,  I  can  only  answer  by  referring  them  to  the 
meeting  between  Serjeant  Buzfuz,  counsel  for  the 
plaintiff,  and  Serjeant  Snubbin,  counsel  for  the  defend- 
ant, in  Bardell  v.  Pickwick,  and  Mr.  Pickwick's  horror 
at  the  cold-blooded  manner  in  which  the  two  rival 
advocates  wished  each  other  good  morning. 

Mrs.  Vaughan,  widow  of  the  former  Master  of  the 
Temple,  once  Headmaster  of  Harrow,  and  Vicar  of 
Doncaster,  came  to  stay  at  Penrhos  while  I  was  there. 
She  was  Dean  Stanley's  sister,  I  think,  and  I  was  pleased 
to  meet  her,  as,  of  course,  she  knew  the  Halfords  very 
well,  and  had  often  met  my  elder  brothers  when  she 
was  staying  with  them.  She  inquired  after  them,  and 
asked  many  questions  about  my  father,  whom  she  re- 
membered as  the  oldest  clergyman  in  the  diocese  and  the 
representative  of  a  bygone  age.  Lord  Stanley  always 
called  her  by  the  name  of  a  popular  actress.  His 
general  ideas  about  actresses,  which  were  well  known, 
gave  the  joke  what  little  point  it  had. 


TORY   SPORTSMEN.  271 

I  had  some  interesting  political  talks  once  with  the 
Dowager  Lady  Stanley,  whose  husband,  Lord  Stanley's 
father,  was  a  well-known  Whig,  President  of  the  Board 
of  Trade  and  Postmaster-General  under  Lord  Palmer- 
ston.  His  widow  must  have  heard  all  that  passed  in 
the  inner  Whig  circle  on  public  affairs  ;  and  it  was 
she  who  told  me  what  I  have  already  mentioned 
in  another  chapter — she  told  me  that  the  Whig  party 
feared  a  collision  between  the  Crown  and  the  Parlia- 
ment as  long  as  Prince  Albert  lived.  She  was  a 
special  admirer  of  John  Morley's  writings,  and  was 
altogether  a  very  well-informed  and  amusing  old  lady, 
quite  of  the  old  school.  Once,  I  was  told,  but  for  this 
I  cannot  vouch,  that  when  she  got  into  the  train 
at  Holyhead  she  took  a  seat  in  the  carriage  which  had 
previously  been  taken  possession  of  by  some  gentleman, 
who  had  left  his  coat  and  hat  to  keep  it  for  him.  Her 
ladyship  removed  these  without  the  smallest  scruple, 
and  when  the  gentleman  returned  and  politely  informed 
her  that  the  seat  was  his,  she  took  no  notice.  He  then 
became  rather  importunate,  when  the  lady  looked  out 
of  the  window  and  called  to  the  guard,  bidding  him 
"  take  away  this  troublesome  person.'* 

Lord  Stanley  himself  was  a  total  abstainer,  and 
though,  of  course,  there  were  the  usual  wines  at  dinner 
and  after,  it  cannot  be  said  that  even  when  the  ladies 
had  retired,  the  bottle  circulated  very  freely.  I  remem- 
ber Lord  Granard  whispering  to  me  as  the  decanter 
came  into  my  hand,  ''  I  say,  give  us  a  back-hander."  As 
we  did  not  stay  very  long  in  the  dining-room,  we  should 
have  had  a  longish  evening  to  get  through  but  for  Lord 
Stanley's  rule  of  giving  us  all  our  candles  at  ten  o'clock, 
the  gentlemen  retiring  to  smoke  and  the  ladies  to  discuss 


272  TORY   MEMORIES. 

the  gentlemen,  with  that  quick  perception  of  character 
which  Lord  Beaconsfield  calls  ''  the  triumph  of  intui- 
tion." 

Breakfast  was  nominally  at  nine,  and  would  be 
over  before  ten,  when  Lord  Stanley  would  usually  ask 
one  of  the  party,  generally  myself,  to  go  out  and  see  the 
keepers  and  tell  them  what  time  he  would  be  ready  to 
start,  which  was  usually  about  an  hour  before  we  actu- 
ally did  set  out.  But  in  this  matter  you  had  to  mind 
your  p*s  and  q's.  The  sporting  party  were  expected 
to  wait  in  the  stable-yard  with  the  keepers  till  Lord 
Stanley  came  out,  which  was  not  till  he  had  done  his 
letters  ;  but  it  was  high  treason  to  quit  the  spot  even 
for  a  moment,  and  if  any  gentleman  was  missing  when  our 
host  hurried  out,  even  though  he  rejoined  the  group  in 
a  few  seconds,  he  suffered  heavily.  But  the  shooting 
was  good  when  you  once  got  out.  Turnips,  potatoes, 
and  barley  stubble  interspersed  among  rocks  covered 
with  fern  and  heather,  made  it  ideal  partridge  ground  for 
shooting  over  with  dogs ;  but  Lord  Stanley  would 
rarely  take  the  trouble  to  beat  it  carefully,  and  as  he 
seldom  stayed  out  above  four  hours,  of  which  a  part 
was  given  to  lunch,  we  never  made  any  heavy  bags. 
The  best  days  I  remember  were  with  three  guns  thirty- 
seven  brace,  and  with  four  guns  fifty-one  brace  ;  but 
on  these  occasions  we  had  longer  days.  I  learned  for 
the  first  time  while  shooting  in  Anglesey  how  fond 
partridges  are  of  seaweed.  They  would  often  lie  among 
the  stones  on  the  beach,  and  in  any  field  manured  with 
seaweed  you  were  sure  to  find  them. 

The  cover  shooting  in  the  winter  was  better  managed. 
The  head  keeper  had  the  direction  of  that,  and  we 
used  to  go  on  until  it  grew  dusk.     I  forget  what  the  bags 


TORY    SPORTSMEN.  273 

used  to  average,  but  we  always  had  plenty  of  shooting. 
It  was  a  good  place  for  woodcocks,  and  there  was  abund- 
ance of  rabbits.  There  were  some  good  snipe  bogs  on 
the  estate,  but  I  never  happened  to  be  there  in  favour- 
able weather,  the  bogs  being  generally  too  full  of  water. 
But  rabbit  shooting  was  what  Lord  Stanley  loved  best, 
and  I  have  seldom  seen  a  better  rabbit  shot.  He  was 
very  keen  over  this  sport,  and  you  had  to  look  out  for 
yourself  when  you  were  anywhere  within  range  of  his 
gun.  In  shooting  at  a  hare  which  was  almost  between 
my  legs,  he  narrowly,  of  course,  missed  peppering  me 
pretty  sharply.  He  saw  that,  but  he  only  smiled  and 
said  :    '*  You'd  have  been  a  great  loss  to  the  party.*' 

Our  partridge  days  used  to  wind  up  sometimes  with 
tea  at  '*  Ellen's  Tower,"  a  tower  on  the  edge  of  the  cliff 
near  the  South  Stack  lighthouse,  on  which  it  looked 
down.  The  ladies  were  driven  up  from  Penrhos  to 
meet  us  there,  and  sometimes  on  these  occasions  we 
visited  the  lighthouse. 

The  rock  on  which  the  lighthouse  stands  has  some 
psychological  interest — for  such,  at  least,  as  believe  that 
animals  have  souls.  The  lighthouse  man  used  to  employ 
a  donkey  for  the  necessary  work  of  the  place,  and  the 
donkey  was  lord  of  the  greensward  which  encircled  the 
edifice.  Thinking  that  he  was  too  hardly  worked,  his 
master  bought  a  pony  to  help  him  ;  but  Johnny  would 
have  no  such  intruder  on  the  ground  which  he  had  so 
long  called  his  own,  and  he  deliberately  murdered  the 
pony,  if  not  with  **  pleasing  circumstances  of  good 
taste,"  like  Toad-in-the-Hole's  tom  cat,  at  least  with 
a  kind  of  devilish  ingenuity  of  which  his  owner  declared 
himself  a  witness.  He  enticed  the  pony  by  degrees  close 
up  to  the  edge  of  the  rock,  and  then  suddenly  turned 


274  TORY   MEMORIES. 

round  and  kicked  him  over.  The  fame  of  this  animal 
has,  I  beheve,  spread  beyond  Anglesey,  and  it  is  a  pity 
that  he  did  not  hve  while  De  Quincey  was  alive,  so 
that  he  might  have  been  immortaHsed  in  **  Murder 
Considered  as  One  of  the  Fine  Arts/' 

It  is  superfluous  to  say  that  Welsh  clergymen  are 
almost  of  necessity  Tories ;  and  the  three  whom  I  met 
in  Anglesey  happened  also  to  be  three  of  the  best  shots 
I  ever  met.  Mr.  Kyffin  of  Llan  Badrig  was  one, 
Mr.  Morgan  of  Bodewryd  was  another,  and  Mr.  Jones  of 
Grafton  in  Cheshire,  though  I  made  his  acquaintance 
at  Penrhos,  was  a  third.  The  three  were  fine  specimens 
of  the  Church  MiUtant,  and  I  thought,  if  the  fate  of  the 
Church  in  Wales  was  likely  to  be  decided  by  blows,  here 
were  three  champions  worthy  of  her.  Jones  was  under- 
stood  to  be  mighty  powerful  with  the  gloves,  and  when 
the  head  keeper  ventured  to  say  he  should  like  to  have 
a  friendly  round  with  him,  and  thought  he  could  '*  give 
him  something  to  do,"  one  of  the  party,  hkewise  a  handy 
man  with  his  fives,  said  he'd  better  not  try,  for  that  Jones 
would  kill  him.  I  was  amused  some  time  after  this 
by  the  keeper  taking  me  aside  confidentially,  and  ask- 
ing me,  in  reference  to  Jones,  who  was  walking  with 
us  that  day,  *'  Does  that  gentleman  practise,  sir  ? '" 
using  the  word  *'  practise  '*  as  he  would  have  done  about 
a  lawyer  or  doctor.  I  was  able  to  assure  him  not  only 
that  Jones  *'  practised,'*  but  that  his  services  were 
highly  valued,  and  that  his  sporting  and  pugiHstic  merits 
were  as  nothing  compared  to  his  prowess  in  the  pulpit. 

About  ten  miles  inland  from  Penrhos  Lord  Stanley 
had  another  estate  of  about  1,500  acres.  Here  there 
was  no  house,  and  he  used  to  stay  with  one  of  his  tenants 
and  distribute  any  friends  whom  he  might  ask  to  shoot 


TORY    SPORTSMEN.  275 

with  him  among  the  others.  I  used  to  have  a  very 
pleasant  time  here.  I  was  always  in  the  same  farm- 
house, sometimes  with  two  ladies,  at  other  times  with 
some  male  companions.  It  was  an  old  Manor-house 
— Plas  Bodewryd,  or,  as  we  should  say,  Bodewryd  Hall 
— and  was  a  very  picturesque  old  place.  The  partridge 
shooting  all  round  was  excellent,  though  there  were  no 
rocks  or  fern  or  heather  to  speak  of.  But  by  Uving  in 
a  farmhouse,  and  shooting  a  good  deal  by  myself,  and 
talking,  as  far  as  it  was  possible,  with  the  farmers  and 
labourers,  I  got  some  knowledge  of  the  nature  of  Welsh 
Dissent.     But  of  that  presently. 

The  ladies  whom  Lord  Stanley  used  to  invite  to 
this  pleasant  retreat  were  often  the  daughters  or  sisters 
of  officers  or  others  whom  he  had  known  in  his  early  days. 
I  remember  Miss  Meadows  Taylor  very  well.  She  was 
the  daughter  of  Colonel  Meadows  Taylor,  of  the  Indian 
Army,  whose  regiment  was  one  of  the  very  few  which 
did  not  join  the  mutineers.  He  married  an  Indian 
princess,  and  his  daughter's  pedigree  was  lost  in  the 
mists  of  antiquity.  Another  very  accomplished  lady, 
a  Frenchwoman,  Mile.  Belloc,  was  frequently  one  of 
the  party ;  she  was  a  very  clever  artist,  and  both 
were  there  when  Mrs.  Kebbel  came  to  Bodewryd.  I  also 
in  her  absence  had  the  pleasure  of  entertaining  Miss 
Kenealy,  the  well-known  lady  doctor  and  novelist,  the 
daughter  of  Dr.  Kenealy,  of  Tichborne  celebrity.  She 
adjured  me  never  to  work  more  than  three  hours  a  day. 
It  was  as  much,  she  declared,  as  anyone's  brain  could 
stand  without  injury.  The  last  two  ladies  with  whom 
I  shared  the  lodgings  at  Bodewryd  about  three  years 
ago  were  Miss  Hepworth  Dixon,  the  authoress,  daughter 
of  Mr.  Hepworth  Dixon,  the  well-known  editor  of  the 


276  TORY    MEMORIES. 

AthencBuniy  and  a  young  lady  not  out  of  her  teens, 
I  think,  the  daughter  of  a  neighbouring  clergyman. 
Lord  Stanley  lost  no  opportunity  of  a  joke,  sometimes 
sailing  rather  near  the  wind,  and  when  he  asked  Miss 
Dixon  how  I  had  entertained  them,  she  gave  me  an 
excellent  character,  adding,  '*  And  he  told  us  some  very 
good  stories."  ''  I  hope,'*  said  Lord  Stanley,  '*  they 
were  proper  ones.''  *'  Oh  !  "  said  Miss  Dixon,  *'  think 
of  blushing  eighteen  !  '* 

The  rabbit  shoot  at  Bodewryd  was  Lord  Stanley's 
great  day,  and  from  all  the  farmhouses  came  his  lady 
guests  to  witness  the  sport.  This  took  place  among  some 
high  banks,  or  steep  hillocks  thickly  covered  with  gorse  ; 
and  as  each  was  beaten  in  turn,  the  guns  were  planted 
round,  while  Lord  Stanley  took  his  stand  upon  the  top, 
with  the  lady  whom  he  had  chosen  for  his  companion 
that  day  by  his  side.  There  he  stood  up  clear  against 
the  sky  like  a  figure  on  a  monument,  and  as  there  was 
abundance  of  rabbits,  the  firing  for  some  time  would  be 
pretty  hot.  The  rabbits,  when  they  did  not  choose  to 
face  the  guns — that  is,  to  bolt  across  the  grass  from  one 
bank  to  another,  ran  up-hill  and  made  for  the  other 
side.  As  long  as  they  were  crossing  the  level  bit  of 
ground  at  the  top  you  were  safe  enough  ;  but  an  ascend- 
ing or  descending  rabbit  placed  the  guns  below  in  some 
jeopardy.  I  never  saw  an  accident  happen — not,  at 
least,  in  rabbit  shooting,  though  it  is  the  most  liable  to 
accidents  of  any  kind  of  sport.  Lord  Stanley  did  not  like 
the  rabbits  missed,  and  he  liked  still  less  to  see  an  in- 
attentive gun  let  a  rabbit  go  by  within  shot  without 
firing  at  it.  Then  the  warder  on  the  hill  let  you  know 
what  he  thought  of  you,  his  trumpet  giving  forth  no 
uncertain  sound. 


TORY    SPORTSMEN.  277 

I  am  very  fond  of  rabbit  shooting,  and  used  to  enjoy 
these  days  very  much  ;  but  the  partridge  shooting,  as 
I  have  said,  was  very  good,  too — very  good  for  ground 
where  there  was  no  gamekeeper  and  the  game  was  left 
entirely  to  the  care  of  the  tenants.  I  could  go  out  any 
day  by  myself  with  a  boy  and  a  spaniel,  and  make  sure 
in  any  ordinary  season  of  eight  or  ten  brace,  some- 
times getting  eleven  or  twelve,  if  birds,  gun,  and  dog 
behaved  properly. 

The  tenants  themselves  on  this  part  of  the  estate 
were  all  very  pleasant  men,  and  many  of  them 
well  educated  and  well  read.  The  tenant  of  Bodewryd 
farm,  who  died  after  my  fourth  or  fifth  season  there, 
was  a  particularly  intelligent  and  gentlemanly  man. 
He  used  always  to  dine  with  us,  and  took  the  bottom  of 
the  table.  He  had  a  great  sense  of  humour,  with  a 
*'  slow,  wise  smile,"  like  that  of  Tennyson*s  miller. 
I  talked  with  him  sometimes  about  the  Church  in  Wales  ; 
and  though  in  speaking  to  a  Churchman  and  a  friend 
of  his  landlord  like  myself,  he  was  naturally  rather 
reserved,  I  think  I  perceived  that  it  was  rather  the  un- 
equal distribution  of  Church  property  than  any  question 
of  Church  government,  or  even  doctrines,  which  op- 
pressed his  conscience.  The  condition  of  the  poorer 
clergy  in  Wales — that  is,  the  majority  of  the  parochial 
clergy — no  doubt  gave  point  to  this  argument.  He 
had  sense  enough  to  see,  however,  that  Disestablish- 
ment, if  it  tended  to  equality,  could  certainly  not  banish 
poverty.  And  I  should  think  that  with  him,  as  with 
many  other  Welsh  Dissenters,  it  was  rather  because 
Methodism  had  become  an  hereditary  creed  with  them, 
which  they  were  bound  in  honour  to  stand  by,  than  for 
any  other  reason,  that  they  remained  Nonconformists. 


278  TORY   MEMORIES. 

Our  host  was,  as  I  have  said,  a  very  sensible  and 
well-informed  man,  but  some  old  rural  superstitions 
still  lingered  in  ^the  back  of  his  head,  and  I  was  very 
much  amused  one  day  when,  speaking  of  an  old  woman 
who  was  reputed  by  the  whole  neighbourhood  to  be  a 
witch,  he  assured  me  gravely  that  she  was  *'  quite 
harmless,"  implying  that  her  equivocal  character  made 
some  such  assurance  necessary.  I  remember,  too,  that 
a  hare  used  to  lie  in  a  neighbouring  churchyard,  and 
had  been  shot  at  once  or  twice  and  missed.  My  friend 
would  not  have  Uked  to  shoot  that  hare  himself.  He 
had  read  the  "  Ancient  Mariner,"  and  perhaps  thought 
of  the  albatross.  He  was  not  so  far  gone  as  to  have 
supposed  that  the  witch,  after  the  manner  of  her  kind, 
sometimes  took  the  form  of  a  hare.  However,  I  de- 
stroyed the  mystery,  if  there  was  one,  by  shooting  the 
hare  myself. 

The  farmers'  wives,  daughters,  and  sisters  whom  I 
met  in  this  part  of  Anglesey  were  often  very  agreeable 
and  ladylike  women,  and  I  could  not  help  saying  to 
myself  very  often,  both  of  themselves  and  their  hus- 
bands, fathers  and  brothers.  Why  are  they  not  Tories  like 
their  ancestors,  who  at  one  time  of  day  were  the  staunch- 
est  Cavaliers  and  Churchmen  going  ?  The  Church  let 
them  go,  and,  ceasing  to  be  Churchmen,  they  ceased  to 
be  Tories.  Alas !  alas  !  considering  the  condition  of 
Wales  at  the  present  moment,  an  old  Tory  may  be  for- 
given for  saying  with  Wordsworth,  that  "  the  wiser  mind 
Mourns  less  for  what  time  takes  away  Than  what  it 
leaves  behind." 

There  were  more  pheasants,  I  think,  at  Penrhos 
than  at  Alderley,  for  the  game  had  been  more  strictly 
preserved  there   by   Lord   Stanley's   uncle,   Mr.   Owen 


TORY    SPORTSMEN.  279 

Stanley,  and  the  covers,  it  may  be,  were  better  situated 
for  shooting.  The  whole  country,  too,  was  much 
wider  and  more  picturesque.  But  the  tenantry  and 
labourers  were  not,  perhaps,  so  well  affected  as  they 
were  at  Bodewryd.  On  the  Penrhos  estate  there  were 
many  very  small  tenants,  who  had  learned  bad  ways  from 
the  Irish  population  at  Holyhead.  They  would  always 
insist  on  keeping  dogs,  whether  they  had  any  sheep  or 
cattle  to  look  after  or  not.  This  was  a  special  griev- 
ance with  Lord  Stanley,  who,  in  his  onslaught  on  the 
dogs,  occasionally  reminded  me  of  Miss  Trotwood  and 
the  donkey  boys.  They  certainly  were  a  great  nuisance 
— as  the  owners  made  no  attempt  to  keep  them  in,  and 
they  were  allowed  to  ramble  all  over  the  fields  in  the 
shooting  season.  I  have  sometimes  been  wicked  enough 
to  imagine  that  this  was  done  on  purpose,  when  they 
knew  Lord  Stanley  was  coming. 

At  Alderley  I  met  two  very  keen  sportsmen.  One  was 
Colonel  Talbot,  son-in-law  of  the  fourteenth  Earl  of  Derby, 
who  was  leader  of  the  Tory  party  from  1846  to  1870. 
Colonel  Talbot  was  a  capital  shot,  and  a  very  frank 
talker,  and  he  enlivened  the  interval  between  the  second 
beats,  or,  when  sport  grew  slack,  by  a  variety  of  choice 
anecdotes,  sometimes  turning  round  to  me  after  he  had 
told  one  and  saying,  ''  You  know,  Mr.  Kebbel,  this  is 
not  to  go  into  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette.''  There  was  very 
little  fear  of  that  in  the  majority  of  instances  !  One  or 
two  others,  which  did  not  go  into  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette, 
went  into  my  little  biography  of  Lord  Derby ;  and  one 
of  them  I  think  so  interesting  that  it  will  bear  being 
repeated  among  these  ''  Memories.'*  Some  of  the  Earl's 
covers  adjoined  the  coal-pits,  and  with  the  colliers 
he  was  on  excellent  terms.     They  never  touched  his 


28o  TORY    MEMORIES. 

game,  but  always  turned  out  in  large  numbers  to  see 
the  covers  shot,  enjoying  the  sport  keenly,  and  betting 
eagerly  on  the  guns.  The  pitmen,  indeed,  almost  wor- 
shipped him,  and  knew  that  they  were  sure  of  his  indul- 
gence or  forbearance  on  any  just  cause.  On  one  occa- 
sion when  his  party  was  approaching  the  pits,  a  deputa- 
tion waited  on  him  to  beg  him  not  to  allow  a  particular 
hare  to  be  shot.  She  had  made  her  form  on  one  of  the 
'*  spoil  banks  *'  as  the  mounds  are  called  on  which  the 
refuse  is  deposited,  and  the  men  had  tamed  her  so  that 
she  would  eat  out  of  their  hands.  It  is  needless  to  say 
that  their  prayer  was  granted,  and  an  edict  issued  placing 
puss  under  protection  for  the  remainder  of  her  natural 
existence.  On  these  occasions  he  was  always  attended 
by  some  of  his  tenantry,  with  whom  he  laughed  and 
joked  at  his  ease.  He  relied,  like  Charles  II.,  on  his 
ready  wit  to  extricate  himself  from  any  difficulties  into 
which  his  love  of  fun  might  lead  him  ;  and  it  certainly 
never  fell  in  vain  on  the  ears  of  the  Lancashire  farmers, 
nor,  if  all  reports  are  true,  on  the  ears  of  Sir  Robert  Peel 
either. 

I  feel  indebted  to  Colonel  Talbot  for  putting  me  at 
my  ease  with  regard  to  a  certain  habit  of  mine  which 
had  incurred  both  the  reproaches  and  the  ridicule  of 
my  friends  and  acquaintances  :  I  refer  to  my  love  of 
taking  plenty  of  luggage  with  me  whenever  I  travel. 
Colonel  Talbot  was  alone  at  Penrhos,  but  when  he  left  I 
observed  that  he  had  bags  and  portmanteaus  with  him 
sufficient,  as  many  would  think,  for  a  large  family.  I 
ventured  to  make  some  remark  about  it,  when  he  re- 
plied, with  admirable  good  sense  :  *'  Why  shouldn't  I 
make  myself  comfortable  ?  "  Why,  indeed  ?  Since  that 
time  I  have  never  been  afraid  to  meet  my  enemies  in 


TORY    SPORTSMEN.  281 

the  gate  to  whatever  country  house  I  might  be  going, 
or  whatever  luggage  I  might  carry. 

Another  well-known  shot  who  came  to  Alderley 
for  the  cover  shooting  was  Mr.  Bucknill,  of  the  Field. 
He  was  a  very  clean  shot,  and  I  have  seen  him  knock 
over  ten  or  a  dozen  pheasants  one  after  the  other,  all 
dead  before  they  touched  the  ground. 

A  fine  breed  of  mastiffs  had  long  been  kept  up  at 
Alderley,  the  genuine  old  English  mastiff,  and  very 
savage.  There  were  two  left  when  I  first  went  there. 
One  of  them  Lord  Stanley  was  in  the  habit  of  taking  out 
walking  with  him,  and  if  he  met  anyone  whom  he  knew, 
and  stopped  to  speak  to  him,  the  faithful  creature 
would  scan  the  stranger  narrowly,  and  if  he  raised  his 
voice,  as,  of  course,  he  naturally  would  do  on  account 
of  Lord  Stanley's  deafness,  "  Tiger "  would  utter  a 
deep  growl,  as  much  as  to  let  the  speaker  know  that  if 
there  was  going  to  be  a  row  he  had  better  look  out  for 
himself.  The  fun  was  that  as  Lord  Stanley  could  not 
hear  the  dog  growl,  he  could  not  understand  his  friend's 
embarrassment. 

But  the  great  event  in  the  winter  at  Alderley  was 
the  Tenants'  Ball,  to  which  all  the  tenants,  large  or 
small,  were  invited,  with  their  wives  and  daughters.  The 
whole  house  party — it  was  never  a  very  large  one — 
adjourned  to  the  great  hall  immediately  after  dinner, 
when  the  ball  was  opened.  The  first  time  I  was  there 
Lady  Stanley  was  present,  and  danced  the  first  dance, 
I  think,  with  the  steward.  Spencely,  the  head  keeper, 
was  also  held  in  high  honour,  and  there  were  several 
good-looking  young  men  among  the  younger  farmers, 
and  two  or  three  pretty  girls  among  their  sisters.  But 
all  alike,  whether  pretty  or  not,  were  nicely  dressed, 


282  TORY    MEMORIES. 

and  had  nice  manners.  They  bore  no  traces  of  their 
rustic  occupations.  Their  complexions  had  not  been  in- 
jured, either  by  wind,  frost,  or  sun,  and  there  were  more 
pale  faces  than  rosy  ones  among  them.  Several  of  the 
girls  who  danced  till  three  or  four  o'clock  in  the  morning 
had  to  walk  home  through  the  snow  to  be  in  time  for 
milking  at  seven.  The  great  feature  of  this  evening  was 
the  morris  dance,  something  like  an  ordinary  country 
dance,  with  this  difference  :  that  a  handkerchief  was 
held  across  under  which  each  couple  had  to  duck, 
chanting  meanwhile  the  following  beautiful  fragment  of 
some  ancient  legendary  ditty,  as  old,  perhaps,  as  the 

Heptarchy  : 

This  is  it,  and  that  is  it, 
This  is  morris  dancing; 
My  poor  father  broke  his  leg 
All  o'  morris  dancing. 

I  don't  believe  that  this  kind  of  morris  dance  had  any- 
thing to  do  with  the  Moors.  This,  however,  is  a  ques- 
tion which  must  be  referred  to  Mr.  Jonathan  Oldbuck. 
As  the  handkerchiefs  were  of  different  colours,  the  effect 
was  very  pretty.  Some  young  ladies  from  the  neigh- 
bourhood were  of  the  party,  but  both  gentlemen  and 
ladies  were  bound  to  mix  freely  with  all  the  rest  of  the 
company ;  and  as  some  of  the  male  performers  danced 
with  less  grace  than  vigour,  you  might  see  the  Squire's 
daughter  swung  fairly  off  her  legs  in  the  arms  of  a  stal- 
wart yeoman,  who  preserved  a  face  of  imperturbable 
gravity  the  while  as  of  one  engaged  in  a  solemn  duty 
with  which  there  was  to  be  no  trifling. 

These  visits  became  annual  ones  for  nearly  twenty 
years,  and  the  period  which  they  embrace,  1884-1903, 
I  shall  always  regard  as  one  of  the  happiest  of  my  life. 


TORY   SPORTSMEN.  283 

But  I  did  not  take  my  leave  of  Wales  and  Cheshire  with- 
out a  secret  twinge  of  conscience,  in  that  I  had  not  ful- 
filled the  duty  tacitly  assigned  to  me :  I  had  not 
attempted  to  make  one  proselyte.  I  think  Mr.  Arthur 
Stanley,  who  will  laugh  if  he  ever  sees  this,  will  acknow- 
ledge that  I  neglected  this  duty  most  severely. 

I  have  had  success,  though,  in  that  line  elsewhere. 
I  have  every  year,  for  some  forty  years,  been  to  stay 
with  a  college  friend  in  Suffolk,  who  had  some  nice 
shooting,  but  was  a  Whig  after  the  manner  of  his  fore- 
fathers. For  a  long  time  I  studiously  abstained  from 
politics  as  such.  I  talked  a  good  deal  about  old  manners 
and  customs,  with  which  I  knew  he  had  a  secret  sym- 
pathy. I  got  him  to  see  how  much  better  the  birds 
used  to  behave  in  former  days  before  Free  Trade  had 
compelled  farmers  to  farm  economically,  and  to  mow 
their  stubbles,  a  direct  consequence,  I  assured  him,  of 
Liberal  legislation.  I  dwelt  on  the  many  virtues  of  the 
good  old  rector,  who  belonged  to  the  old  school ;  and  also 
on  the  inestimable  value  of  a  good  acquaintance  with 
Horace  and  Homer,  and  on  the  charm  of  the  old  Univer- 
sity life,  sneered  at  by  Liberal  reformers.  By  constantly 
expatiating  on  these  various  memories  and  sympathies, 
which  all  tended  in  one  direction,  without  ever  men- 
tioning such  words  as  Whig  or  Tory,  Liberal  or  Conser- 
vative, or  even  discussing  any  of  the  political  questions 
of  the  period,  I  saw  with  satisfaction  that  I  was  making 
an  impression  on  him,  and  that  he  was  beginning  to 
colour  like  a  meerschaum  pipe.  He  has  continued  to 
grow  in  grace,  and  is  now  on  all  municipal  questions  a 
thorough-going  Tory.  I  don't  think  he  has  yet  voted 
Tory  at  a  Parliamentary  election,  but  I  expect  he  will 
do  at  the  next !     When  I  have  done  thus  much  for  a 


284  TORY    MEMORIES. 

man,  have  I  not  more  than  repaid  him  for  all  the  part- 
ridges and  pheasants  I  have  shot  over  his  ground  ?  This 
is  an  action  on  which  a  man  can  look  back  with  comfort 
on  his  death-bed.  I  have  brought  one  sheep  into  the  fold, 
and  that  is  more,  perhaps,  than  every  Tory  can  say  ! 
I  have  said  a  good  deal  about  shooting  in  these 
reminiscences,  and  the  Game  Laws  and  Toryism  are, 
without  doubt,  very  closely  connected  together.  A 
good  deal  of  absurd  prejudice  on  the  subject  has  been 
eradicated  from  the  public  mind  during  the  last  half- 
century,  and  the  diminution  of  poaching  since  the 
passing  of  the  Ground  Game  Act  in  1881  has  done  away 
with  another  set  of  arguments  less  sentimental,  but 
equally  illogical.  The  starving  peasant  snaring  a  rabbit 
for  his  sick  wife  has  disappeared  from  the  note-book 
of  the  pseudo-philanthropist.  As  game  no  longer  pre- 
sents the  same  temptation  to  the  criminal  classes  that 
it  did  when  hares  and  rabbits  were  more  abundant,  the 
public  are  no  longer  shocked  by  so  many  fatal  affrays 
between  keepers  and  poachers  as  used  to  occur  in  a 
former  generation.  There  remains,  then,  only  the 
pohtical  argument  that,  as  shooting  is  one  of  the  prin- 
cipal amusements  and  most  invigorating  exercises  of 
the  country  gentlemen,  and  helps  largely  to  keep  them 
resident  on  their  estates,  game  should  be  abolished  on 
this  ground  alone.  ''  We  don't  want  the  country  gen- 
tleman,'* say  the  Radicals.  "  We  should  do  better  with- 
out him,  and  instead  of  encouraging  him  to  remain 
where  he  is,  we  should  do  everything  to  rob  his  position 
of  all  its  pleasures  and  privileges,  of  all  its  influence  and 
authority,  and  so  gradually  starve  him  out.  We  have 
done  something  towards  accomplishing  this  result,  and 
mean  to  do  more.     The  game  must  go." 


TORY    SPORTSMEN.  285 

So  they  talk,  and  so  they  have  talked  before ;  but 
they  have  never  before  been  strong  enough  to  make  it 
more  than  talk,  and  I  doubt  if  they  are  now.  I  have 
had  a  good  deal  of  conversation,  both  with  labourers  and 
with  farmers,  on  the  subject.  Among  the  latter,  no 
doubt,  is  to  be  found  some  discontent,  though  not  very 
deep  or  very  wide,  with  the  existing  system,  but  not 
with  the  game  laws.  With  the  former  there  is  a  feel- 
ing that  it  is  rather  hard  for  a  man  to  go  to  prison  for 
taking  a  rabbit ;  but  they  certainly  do  not  desire  that 
there  should  be  no  rabbits  to  take.  They  think  a  little 
poaching,  though  confessedly  wrong,  should  be  winked 
at  on  occasions,  like  drunkenness  ;  but  as  for  abolish- 
ing the  game  laws,  exterminating  game,  and  suppress- 
ing the  sport  of  shooting,  they  know  a  trick  worth  two 
of  that.  The  farmer's  grievance,  where  he  has  any, 
is  not  that  game  is  protected,  but  that  he  has  not  the 
right  to  it  himself.  I  was  talking  not  long  ago  to  a 
highly  respectable  young  farmer  in  Hampshire.  ''  I 
think  the  tenant  ought  to  have  the  game,"  he  said. 
"WeU,''  I  said;  *' but  the  tenant  and  the  landlord 
can't  both  have  it.  Which  has  the  prior  right  ?  "  But 
he  declined  to  argue  the  question,  nor  did  it  matter. 
I  only  had  from  him  what  I  have  had  from  other  tenant 
farmers,  the  acknowledgment  that  what  they  want  is 
not  the  repeal  of  the  game  laws,  but  the  transference 
of  the  game  to  themselves.  We  should  hear  nothing 
about  the  damage  done  to  crops  then. 

On  the  top  of  this  very  natural  desire  to  seize  what 
does  not  belong  to  you,  because  you  happen  to  hke  it, 
comes  another  grievance  of  a  much  more  petty  charac- 
ter. I  have  known  farmers  who  couldn't  bear  to  see 
the  landlord  or  his  keeper  walking  across  their  land. 


286  TORY   MEMORIES. 

This  was  purely  personal  jealousy.  I  recollect  very 
well  as  I  was  walking  through  a  country  village  with  the 
squire  of  the  parish  on  the  way  to  some  partridge  shoot- 
ing, a  tenant  rushing  out  of  his  house  to  beg  his  land- 
lord not  to  walk  through  his  beans.  Nine  times  out  of 
ten  walking  through  beans  does  them  no  harm  if  you 
don't  let  the  dogs  run  about  in  them.  Still,  I  have  no 
doubt  that  in  this  instance  the  landlord  would  have 
received  the  request  courteously  had  it  been  made  cour- 
teously, and  have  promised  to  be  as  careful  as  he  could 
be.  But  the  man's  manner  was  most  offensive.  The 
fact  was,  he  did  not  like  the  squire  on  his  land  at  all, 
and  he  took  this  way  of  showing  it.  My  friend,  who 
knew  his  man,  answered  him  very  shortly,  and  went 
on  his  way,  taking  the  beans  as  they  came  without 
doing  either  more  or  less  harm  to  them  in  consequence 
of  what  had  passed.  But  I  mention  this  Httle  incident 
as  illustrative  of  the  temper  which  prevails  among  a 
certain  class  of  tenant  farmers^ — a  very  limited  class,  I 
am  sure,  more  noisy  than  numerous,  and  actuated  rather 
by  social  jealousy  than  by  agricultural  conditions. 

But  as  for  the  peasantry,  many  of  them  look  on  fox- 
hunters  and  pheasant  shooters  as  their  best  friends. 
Neither  the  one  nor  the  other  can  do  them  any  harm. 
The  agricultural  labourer  leaves  his  plough,  the  shoe- 
maker his  last,  the  tailor  his  shears  as  soon  as  it  is  known 
that  the  hounds  are  hard  by.  Cobbett  describes  how  he 
left  his  farm  work  the  moment  he  heard  the  harriers ; 
and  so  it  is  still  in  every  village  in  England.  If  one  runs 
with  the  hounds  there  are  shillings  to  be  picked  up 
by  holding  horses,  opening  gates,  and  showing  the  way 
to  bewildered  horsemen.  In  cover  shooting  there  are 
beaters  wanted  with  so  much  a  day,  and  a  luncheon  or 


TORY   SPORTSMEN.  287 

supper  besides.  No,  no.  Put  the  question  to  the 
peasant  fair  and  square,  without  any  collateral  issues 
mixed  up  with  it :  Does  he  wish  to  see  game  destroyed, 
and  shooting  abolished  ?  and  the  answer  would  be 
almost  universally.  No. 

Before  quitting  the  subject  of  shooting,  I  may 
mention  that  my  first  experience  of  driving  was  on  the 
estates  of  a  famous  hero.  Lord  Strathnairn.  I  myself 
belong  to  the  canine  period,  and  was  never  much  of  a 
hand  at  the  butts.  I  could  kill  birds  pretty  fairly  some- 
times, but  never  really  well.  On  this  occasion,  however, 
I  was  lucky.  I  was  staying  with  some  friends  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  Newsells,  Lord  Strathnairn's  place  in 
Hertfordshire,  and  through  them  I  received  an  invita- 
tion to  shoot  there.  The  game  was  not  very  abundant, 
nor  had  I  been  doing  very  well ;  but  near  the  end  of 
the  day,  when  I  was  standing  next  to  Lord  Strathnairn, 
I  happened  to  kill  two  birds  right  and  left  as  they  came 
high  over  my  head.  His  lordship  complimented  me  on 
my  skill,  though  I  knew  it  to  be  exceptional ;  but  a 
compUment  from  Lord  Strathnairn  was  praise  from 
Sir  Hubert  Stanley. 


CHAPTER    XVIII. 

TORY     AGRICULTURISTS.* 

Where  the  Allotment  System  Originated — Difference  between  Allot- 
ments and  Small  Holdings — The  "  Tatur  Field  " — Advantages  of 
a  Large  System  of  Peasant  Farming — A  Call  to  Landowners  for 
Combined  Action — A  Co-operative  Farm  Forty  Years  Ago — The 
Tenant  Farmer,  Old  Style. 

From  sport  to  agriculture  is  a  short  step,  and  of  agri- 
cultural questions  my  Tory  memories  are  pretty  full. 
The  whole  question,  which  may  be  embraced  under  the 
one  head  of  La  Petite  Culture,  was  early  taken  up  by 
the  *'  clergy,  nobility,  and  gentry ''  (for  such  was  the 
order  in  which  they  were  always  placed)  in  the  midland 
counties,  who  were,  with  few  exceptions,  Tories  ;  and 
I  think  Leicestershire  was  almost  the  first,  if  not  the 
first,  English  county  in  which  the  allotment  system  took 
root.  This  originally  was,  and  should  still  be  kept, 
something  quite  distinct  from  the  small  holding  system, 
which  is  intended  to  encourage  the  growth  of  a  class  of 
small  cultivators,  whether  as  owners  or  occupiers,  and 
thus  to  distribute  the  land  among  a  larger  number. 
The  allotment  system,  on  the  contrary,  was  intended 
only  to  supplement  wages,  and  to  compensate  the 
labourers  for  what  they  had  lost  by  the  enclosure  of 
wastes  and  commons.     It  was  never  intended  that  the 

♦Part  of  this   chapter  has   already  appeared   in  "The  Agricultural 
Labourer,"  by  T.  E.  Kebbel,  4th  edition,  1907. 

2S8 


TORY    AGRICULTURISTS.  289 

allotment  should  do  more  than  occupy  the  labourer's 
leisure  hours — such  time,  that  is,  as  he  could  spare  from 
his  daily  farm  work,  by  which  he  earned  his  weekly 
wages.  At  first  it  was  made  a  condition  that  he  should 
only  grow  vegetables  and  fruit ;  but  this  it  was  found 
practically  impossible  to  enforce  ;  and  a  bit  of  barley 
for  the  pig  very  soon  came  to  be  recognised  as  a  legitimate 
crop,  together  with  the  cabbages  and  potatoes.  The 
original  name  given  to  these  allotments  was  field- 
gardens,  to  distinguish  them  from  cottage  gardens, 
which  in  some  parts  of  England  were,  and  are,  large 
enough  to  serve  nearly  the  same  purpose.  But  that 
was  not  so  in  the  Midlands,  as  I  recollect  them,  and  it 
was  from  this  part  of  England  that  the  allotment  system 
spread  as  from  a  centre,  for  in  those  counties  it  satisfied 
a  real  want. 

The  original  intention  of  the  allotment  was  long 
preserved,  and  may  be  so  still,  in  the  name  by  which 
the  village  people  called  it.  The  Kilby  allotments  were 
always  known  as  ''  the  tatur  field.'*  They  consisted 
of  about  eight  acres,  which  my  father  let  off  from  his 
glebe  in  portions  of  about  a  quarter  of  an  acre.  This 
gave  some  thirty  allotments,  and  as  the  population  of 
the  village  was  then  only  four  hundred,  of  which  tenant 
farmers,  small  tradesmen,  carpenters,  and  shoemakers 
formed  a  considerable  proportion,  this  would  give  an 
allotment  for  every  other  family,  or,  if  you  deduct  the 
stockingers,  as  they  were  called,  or  framework  knitters, 
a  substantial  flake  of  the  population  in  every  Leicester- 
shire village,  and  count  in  only  the  agricultural  labourers 
pure  and  simple,  for  whose  use  the  allotments  were  at 
first  exclusively  intended,  we  shall  have  a  rood  of  ground 
for   nearly   ever^^   family   in   the   village.     The   system 


290  TORY    MEMORIES. 

worked  happily  as  long  as  I  can  recollect  anything 
about  it,  my  memory  of  such  things  dating  from  the 
early  forties.  But  the  '*  tatur  field  '*  had  then  been  in 
existence  some  ten  or  twelve  years,  if  not  more ;  and 
when,  after  my  father's  death,  we  left  Kilby,  in  1868, 
it  was  still  flourishing,  and  was  continued  by  his  suc- 
cessor, John  Halford.  My  father's  example  had  been 
extensively  followed,  and  before  I  left  home  I  think 
there  was  hardly  a  village  within  twenty  miles  of  us 
without  its  allotment  grounds.  But  since  that  time  the 
larger  question  of  Small  Holdings  has  come  to  the  front, 
and  what  ought  to  be  regarded  as  a  purely  economic  or 
social  question  has  drifted  into  politics,  and  become 
the  battlefield  of  parties. 

The  advantages  and  disadvantages  of  peasant  farm- 
ing and  peasant  proprietorship  have  been  almost  ex- 
haustively discussed  by  experts  on  both  sides.  With  the 
Socialist  theory  that  the  labourers  have  a  right  to  the 
land  independently  of  all  questions  of  expediency,  I 
have  nothing  to  do  in  these  pages.  You  cannot  rob  a 
man  of  his  birthright  because  of  the  use  he  is  likely  to 
make  of  it.  That  is  his  affair.  If  the  peasantry  possess 
this  right,  the  certainty  that  if  it  were  conceded  the 
large  majority  would  be  paupers  in  the  third  generation 
cannot  be  urged  against  it.  If  they  choose  to  rush  upon 
their  fate,  they  must  do  so.  But  as  I  recognise  no  such 
right  in  any  class  of  the  community,  land,  like  other 
property,  belonging  to  those  who  can  get  it,  and  those 
to  whom  they  choose  to  leave  it,  I  shall  content  myself 
with  recording  what  I  remember  of  the  system  myself 
when  I  Hved  in  the  country,  and  what  I  have  been 
told  by  those  who  have  equal  or  better  means  of 
judging. 


TORY    AGRICULTURISTS.  291 

I  should  add  that,  in  theory,  I  am  wholly  in  favour  of 
a  large  class  of  peasant  farmers.  The  possibility  of  rising 
into  that  position  is  a  great  stimulus  to  the  day  labourer, 
and  largely  helps  him  to  keep  sober,  frugal,  and  industri- 
ous. It  is  also  a  means  by  which  the  quality  of  our 
skiUed  labour,  which  has  so  greatly  deteriorated  of  late, 
might  be  permanently  improved,  as  the  peasant  would 
know  that  he  could  never  succeed  in  a  small  farm  un- 
less he  were  a  skilled  workman,  and  the  disinclination  to 
learn  agricultural  work  demanding  special  skill,  charac- 
teristic of  the  present  race  of  labourers,  might  thus  be 
overcome.  All  my  Tory  traditions,  sympathies,  and 
instincts  would  make  me  look  with  joy  on  the 
spectacle  of  a  contented  and  prosperous  agricultural 
peasantry  spread  over  the  soil  in  much  larger 
numbers  than  at  present,  satisfied  with  their  own 
position,  and  not  seeking  to  rise  out  of  it.  Is  this  a 
dream  ? 

I  would  fain  believe  not.  But  to  make  it  more  than 
a  dream,  the  whole  landed  aristocracy  must  put  their 
shoulders  to  the  wheel  and  their  hands  into  their  pockets , 
and  that,  too,  without  delay,  or  the  question  will  be 
taken  out  of  their  hands,  if  this  indeed  has  not  been 
done  already.  To  see  our  ''  Territorial  Constitution  " 
preserved  in  all  its  essential  integrity  would  make  a 
happy  man  of  many  a  true  Tory ;  but  unless  the  old 
ties  between  the  gentry  and  the  peasantry  can  be  re- 
vived, I  fear  that  its  future  is  precarious.  Schemes  are 
undoubtedly  on  foot  for  the  compulsory  creation  of 
small  farms  by  robbing  the  landowners  of  what  is  neces- 
sary for  the  purpose.  I  here  repeat  what  I  wrote  in  the 
Nineteenth  Century  (July,  1906),  that  if  the  landed  aris- 
tocracy know  in  this  their  day  the  things  pertaining  to 


292  TORY    MEMORIES. 

their  peace,  they  will  endeavour  to  make  some  combined 
move  to  frustrate  this  revolutionary  project.  I  shall 
make  no  apology  for  quoting  here  what  I  wrote  in  that 
Review  : 

The  necessity  for  a  powerful  Conservative  Party  to  oppose 
those  measures  of  "  dangerously  Socialistic  character,"  as  the  Duke 
of  Devonshire  described  them  last  March,  is  becoming  more  obvious 
each  day.  Such  a  party  will  be  required  not  only  to-morrow  and 
the  next  day,  but  for  many  a  long  year  to  come  ;  and  I  believe  it 
can  be  formed,  if  what  I  will  again  call  the  "  Country  Party  "  will 
bestir  themselves,  and  look  facts  and  tendencies  in  the  face.  Let 
them  only  regain  the  counties  and  all  will  go  well.  The  way  to  regain 
the  counties  is  to  satisfy  the  villages.  And  for  this  purpose  a  large 
and  well-organised  system  of  peasant-farmers  should  be  inaugurated 
by  the  great  landlords.  It  must  not  be  the  work  of  a  few  individuals  ; 
there  must  be  a  combination  of  the  whole  body  throughout  the  king- 
dom. Every  landowner  with  an  estate  of  a  certain  magnitude  should 
be  able  to  set  aside  so  many  acres  to  be  let  out  in  small  holdings. 
If  he  were  a  pecuniary  loser  by  the  process,  he  would  be  a  gainer  of 
what  is  far  more  valuable,  in  the  security  which  he  would  purchase 
for  the  rest  of  his  property.  Such  a  system  as  this  inaugurated  and 
kept  on  foot  by  the  whole  landed  aristocracy,  would  bind  the  peasantry 
to  their  natural  leaders,  checkmate  the  agrarian  agitators,  and  insure 
to  the  agricultural  and  landed  interest  sufficient  weight  in  the  House 
of  Commons,  not  only  to  protect  itself  from  all  further  assaults,  but 
to  protect  the  other  institutions  of  the  country  from  that  combined 
attack  which  his  Grace  of  Devonshire — no  violent  Conservative  or 
panic-stricken  alarmist — believes  to  be  at  hand.  This  can  only  be 
done,  of  course,  by  the  formation  of  a  great  Landowners'  Association 
with  a  common  fund  for  such  expenses  as  the  change  may  necessitate. 
The  richer  ones  must  pay  for  the  poorer,  on  the  same  principle  as 
the  equalisation  of  rates.  I  am  familiar  with  the  objections  that 
landlords  could  not  afford  the  expense  of  putting  up  new  farms  and 
farm  buildings,  and  homesteads.  But  it  is  difficult  to  beheve  that 
among  the  whole  landed  aristocracy,  from  men  with  half  a  million 
a  year  down  to  men  with  five  thousand,  the  money  could  not  be 
found,  if  all  alike  were  in  earnest.  They  could  do  it  if  they  hked. 
We  want  an  organised  combination,  embracing  the  whole  landlord 
class  from  the  Tweed  to  the  Solent,  who  should  take  the  matter 
into  their  own  hands  and  give  the  labourers  what  they  want,  without 
any  legislative  interference. 


TORY    AGRICULTURISTS.  293 

The  process  of  buying  up  small  freeholds  by  the 
larger  landowners  in  the  neighbourhood  has  been  going 
on  for  years  all  over  the  kingdom.  When  I  was  a  boy 
there  were  in  my  father's  parish  eight  small  freeholds 
besides  the  Wistow  property,  which,  of  course,  formed  a 
large  part  of  it.  The  owner  of  only  one  of  these  was  not 
a  peasant  proprietor,  but  a  yeoman,  owning  a  hundred 
acres.  The  others  were  not  above  the  rank  of  peasants. 
But  these  little  farms,  if  farms  they  can  be  called,  were 
with  one  exception  aU  grass,  on  which  the  owner  kept 
some  sheep  and  a  cow  or  two,  and,  as  far  as  I  can 
remember,  even  the  man  who  had  no  other  business 
did  well.  But  most  of  them  combined  with  their  small 
holdings  some  other  business,  and  made  the  one  play 
into  the  other.  The  butcher  had  some  acres  of  grass. 
The  village  carrier  and  the  village  pubHcan  had  two  or 
three  fields.  Only  one  man  that  I  can  remember  came 
to  grief  while  we  lived  in  the  village,  and  he  was  half 
an  imbecile.  Now,  every  one  of  these  bits  of  land  was 
bought  up  by  the  owner  of  the  principal  estate,  and  the 
most  deserving  peasant  in  the  parish  might  look  in  vain 
for  anything  like  a  small  farm. 

I  know  that  the  labourers  possess  rather  exaggerated 
ideas  of  what  can  be  done  with  '*  a  bit  o'  land."  ''  It 
was  a  poor  tale,**  they  would  say  of  six  or  eight  acres 
of  land,  ''  if  a  man  couldn't  get  a  living  off  that.'*  They 
took  no  account  of  bad  seasons,  of  the  loss  of  stock,  of 
any  of  the  innumerable  accidents  to  which  agriculture 
is  Uable  ;  and  here  is  the  initial  difficulty  of  reviving  on 
a  large  scale  the  system  of  la  petite  culture  as  it  exists 
in  France  and  Belgium.  No  ordinary  English  labourer 
— and  I  am  not  speaking  of  exceptional  men — could  ever 
provide  for  a  rainy  day  on  the  proceeds  of  a  six-acre 


294  TORY   MEMORIES. 

farni.  He  hasn't  got  it  in  him.  He  couldn't  hve  as  the 
French  peasant  Uves  ;  and  we  find,  in  fact,  in  spite  of 
what  I  have  said,  that  the  peasantry  are  not  very  keen 
about  the  land,  and  would  prefer  a  substantial  rise  in 
wages,  with  the  certainty  of  a  livelihood,  to  the  risks 
and  hardships  of  a  farm. 

There  are  few  questions,  however,  about  which  the 
evidence  is  so  conflicting; 

The  allotment  system  now  is  quite  a  different  thing 
from  what  it  was  in  my  early  days.  The  legislation  of 
1887  h^s  abolished  the  distinction  between  an  allotment 
and  a  small  holding.  The  occupier  of  an  allotment  is 
now  brought  under  the  operation  of  the  Agricultural 
Holdings  Acts,  and  his  relations  with  the  owner  are 
purely  commercial  and  business-like.  The  system,  as  I 
remember  it,  was  so  administered  as  to  exercise  a  good 
moral  effect.  The  allottee  knew  that  if  he  miscon- 
ducted himself,  became  a  notorious  drunkard  or  evil 
liver,  it  was  in  the  power  of  his  landlord  to  turn  him 
out  at  will.  It  was  known  also  that  to  no  such  man 
would  an  allotment  be  granted.  Let  small  farms  be 
multiplied  to  any  extent.  Let  it  be  possible  for  every 
agricultural  labourer  who  has  shown  that  he  possesses  the 
qualities  necessary  to  ensure  success  to  be  able  to  look 
forward  to  ending  his  days  in  independence.  The  allot- 
ment system  may  contribute  something  towards  help- 
ing him  to  attain  this  position  ;  but  I  suppose  we  have 
now  outgrown  all  moral  considerations,  as  savouring 
too  much  of  paternal  government.  I  am  bound  to  add 
that  so  competent  a  judge  as  Lord  Onslow,  who  has  been 
kind  enough  to  correspond  with  me  on  the  subject,  does 
not  take  the  same  view  of  it.  He  highly  approves  of 
the  Act  passed  twenty  years  ago. 


TORY   AGRICULTURISTS.  295 

Among  my  mingled  agricultural  and  Tory  memories, 
I  recall  the  visions  of  a  co-operative  farm  which  was 
started  many  years  ago  on  the  estate  of  Mr.  Gurdon  at 
Assington  in  Suffolk.  It  is  nearer  forty  than  thirty  years 
since  I  was  there  ;  and  whether  the  experiment  has 
been  a  continued  success  or  not,  I  don't  know.  It  was 
started  by  Mr.  Gurdon  as  long  ago  as  1830,  so  that  when 
I  first  saw  the  land,  the  system  had  been  in  operation 
for  more  than  one  generation.  I  was  shown  over  the 
land  by  a  very  intelligent  young  fellow,  who  amused 
me  by  his  mode  of  explaining  why  it  was  disliked  by  the 
farmers  :  the  labourers  who  were  members  of  this  co- 
operative society  ''  wouldn't  stand  being  swore  at,'' 
like  those  who  were  not.  At  first  there  was  only  one 
farm  of  thirty-three  acres,  the  company  being  started 
by  a  loan  from  the  landlord  of  £400.  In  1854  ^  ^^^ 
farm  of  212  acres  was  taken  on,  assisted  by  a  similar 
loan.  The  members'  subscriptions  were  £3  apiece  for 
the  old  farm,  and  £^  los.  for  the  new  one.  There  were 
two  companies,  one  for  each  farm,  the  smaller  consist- 
ing of  twenty-one  members  and  the  larger  one  of  thirty- 
six.  How  many  there  may  be  now,  I  don't  know  ;  but 
it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  these  members  were  all 
agricultural  labourers,  working  for  the  farmers  just  the 
same.  Their  share  in  the  co-operative  business  did  not 
turn  them  into  small  farmers,  cultivating  land  for  them- 
selves. The  farms  were  superintended  by  a  manager 
under  whom  the  members  could  work  if  they  chose  as 
they  would  do  under  any  of  the  farmers.  Their  share 
might  increase  their  income,  but  it  did  not  alter  their 
position.  Thus  the  particular  moral  effect  of  the  small 
holding  system  to  which  Lord  Salisbury  attached  so 
much   importance   is   here   wholly   wanting ;     but   the 


296  TORY    MEMORIES. 

system  had  a  moral  side  to  it  all  the  same,  just  like  the 
allotment  system.  No  member  was  allowed  to  receive 
parish  relief,  or  to  retain  his  share  if  convicted  of  a 
felonious  offence,  and  no  member  was  allowed  to  live 
more  than  three  miles  away  from  the  parish. 

There  was  also  at  Assington  a  co-operative  store, 
but  I  cannot  say  that  my  Tory  sympathies  went  out 
very  warmly  either  to  the  stores  or  to  the  farms.  I  am, 
perhaps,  what  I  saw  somebody  called  the  other  day,  ''  a 
rampant  Individualist."  I  must  say  I  do  regret  the 
disappearance  from  our  country  villages  of  many  of 
those  minor  industries  which  gave  life  to  the  place,  and 
afforded  a  variety  of  interest  to  the  little  community. 
If  we  are  always  to  be  guided  by  considerations  of 
political  economy,  why  not  apply  that  rigid  science  all 
round  ?  And  certainly  political  economy  has  little  to 
say  in  favour  of  small  holdings — in  favour,  that  is,  of 
substituting  la  petite  culture  for  la  grande,  all  over  the 
country,  and  establishing  it  permanently  as  the  national 
system  of  agriculture  ;  and  this,  of  course,  is  what  the 
Socialists  are  aiming  at. 

I  am  thankful  to  say  that  my  Tory  memories  still  in- 
clude the  portly  and  pleasant  figure  of  the  regular  tenant 
farmer,  the  man  of  from  two  to  five  hundred  acres,  who 
must  inevitably  disappear  like  other  interesting  members 
of  the  British  fauna  before  the  hand  of  the  Socialist.  I 
remember  him  as  he  was  in  his  happy  days : 

Once  tame  and  mild 
As  grazing  ox  unworried  in  the  meads — 

now,  harassed  by  adversity,  goaded  by  agitation,  and  so 
bamboozled  by  interested  knaves,  who  would  only  make 
a  catspaw  of  him,  that  he  hardly  knows  his  real  friends 
from  his  false  ones.     I  remember  him  and  his  hearty 


TORY    AGRICULTURISTS.  297 

welcome  when  he  met  you  out  shooting,  and  his  home- 
brewed (oh,  my  eye  !),  and  his  cold  beef,  and  his  turkey 
at  Christmas,  and  his  half-sovereign  always  forthcoming 
at  the  charity  sermon,  and  his  brown  broad-skirted 
coat,  richly-flowered  waistcoat,  and  neat  grey  stock- 
ings and  smalls.  The  poor  fellow  has  few  half-sovereigns 
to  spare  now,  all  his  turkeys  necessarily  go  to  market, 
and  his  home-brewed  is  fetched  from  the  neighbouring 
pump.  I  allow  that  this  fearful  picture,  which  the 
ancients  might  almost  have  ranked  with  the  TrpiafjuLKat 
TvxO'i'i  the  ne  plus  ultra  of  calamity  in  their  estima- 
tion, is  not  universally  true  ;  and  I  hope  it  may  be 
growing  less  and  less  so  every  day.  Many  brave  men 
have  weathered  the  storm  and  reached  land  at  last ; 
many  more  are  still  struggling  with  the  waves  ;  but 
many,  alas  !   have  sunk  to  rise  no  more. 

My  memory,  however,  still  retains  the  image  of  one 
of  whom  I  just  caught  a  parting  ghmpse — just  the  ends 
of  his  coat-tails  ere  he  vanished  from  the  stage — and 
it  is  this  ghmpse  which  compels  me  to  say  a  word  or  two 
about  the  jolly  race  of  men  I  have  just  described,  more 
perhaps,  in  the  spirit  of  Cobbett  than  in  harmony 
with  my  own  affections.  I  have  spoken  with  men  who 
would  say,  perhaps  not  in  so  many  words,  that  it  was 
not  for  the  like  of  them  to  shoot,  who  were  angry  with 
their  sons  if  they  dreamed  of  hunting,  and  who,  in  fact, 
represented  the  British  tenant  farmer  as  he  was  in  the 
days  of  George  Ehot.  Now,  if  this  mode  of  living  had 
been  continued  for  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  neither  free  trade  nor  agricultural  depression 
would  have  fallen  so  heavily  on  the  farmer's  head. 
But  they  made  no  provision  for  a  rainy  day,  and 
lived  as  if  the  Corn  Laws  would  last  for  ever.    Free 


298  TORY   MEMORIES. 

trade,  while  the  good  times  lasted,  did  him  no  harm ; 
and  I  remember  I  used  to  meet  about  the  roads  in 
Leicestershire  young  farmers,  mounted  on  capital  hunters, 
admirably  got  up  in  buckskins,  boots,  and  black  coats, 
on  their  way  to  meet  Mr.  Tailby's  hounds,  or  perhaps 
the  Quorn,  if  it  was  their  day  on  that  side  the  county  : 
and  not  apparently,  as  it  seemed  to  themselves  at  the 
time,  living  beyond  their  means.  But  they  made  the 
mistake  of  supposing  that  the  sun  would  always  shine. 
So  they  had  their  hunters,  and,  where  it  was  open  to 
them,  their  pointers  ;  their  sisters  had  their  governesses, 
and  the  piano — and  I  don't  know,  after  all,  that  one  can 
very  much  blame  them.  Wheat  being  kept  up  arti- 
ficially at  a  price  which  seemed  to  justify  this  expendi- 
ture, was  it  not  in  human  nature  to  take  advantage  of 
it  ?  Many  of  those  who  did  came  to  grief.  I  can  recol- 
lect personally  several  who  were  sad  examples  of  the 
truth  of  these  remarks ;  and  in  Leicestershire,  if  a  man 
wanted  to  hunt  and  see  anything  of  the  run  he  could 
not  do  it  very  cheaply.  But  in  the  grass  countries  the 
farmers  were  not  hit  so  hard  as  in  the  corn-growing 
districts. 


CHAPTER    XIX. 

OXFORD   TORYISM. 

Distinct  Types  of  Toryism  at  Oxford — Sewell — Dr.  Marsham — Muckle- 
stone — Mitchell — Dr.  Routh — Tommy  Short — Dr.  Symonds — Plump- 
tre  and  Punch — Dr.  Pusey — His  Toryism — An  Apparition — New- 
man— Lost  Causes  and  False  Quantities — Mansel — Mark  Pattison — 
Halford  Vaughan — Brocket  of  St.  Dunstan's. 

How  far  it  is  allowable  to  talk  of  Oxford  Toryism  at 
the  present  day,  when  tramcars  run  down  the  High 
Street  and  over  Magdalen  Bridge,  and  the  University 
is  encircled  by  a  cordon  of  upstart  villas,  against  which 
the  spires  and  the  towers  of  churches  and  colleges  rise 
up  in  silent  and  majestic  protest,  is  perhaps  a  doubtful 
point.  But  when  I  was  at  Oxford,  progress  had  not  laid 
its  profane  claws  upon  the  venerable  home  of  loyalty, 
religion,  and  scholarship.  The  branch  line  from  Didcot 
to  Oxford  had  only  just  been  opened ;  and  members  of 
the  University  going  northward  had  still  to  travel  part 
of  the  way  by  coach.  I  remember  very  well  riding  out- 
side the  coach  from  Oxford  to  Rugby,  and  I  think  also 
to  Blisworth,  so  that  my  readers  may  suppose  that  the 
genius  loci  had  not  at  that  time  been  very  rudely  dis- 
turbed. At  Oxford  there  were  two  or  three  distinct 
types  of  Toryism,  as  probably  there  are  still.  There 
was  the  Tory  by  tradition — the  man  who,  whatever 
opinions  he  held  when  he  first  came  to  Oxford,  suc- 
cumbed to  its  magic  :    the  nameless  spell  which  lurks 

299 


300  TORY    MEMORIES. 

among  its  groves  and  cloisters,  its  gardens  and  its  halls, 
redolent  of  romance  and  poetry.  This  was  a  kind  of 
Toryism  which  did  not  often  find  expression  in  words,  or 
in  the  noisy  arena  of  party  politics  ;  but  it  leavened  the 
whole  place,  and  even  those  whose  conduct  was  not 
guided  by  it  felt  its  influence,  and  tacitly  and  un- 
consciously acknowledged  it. 

In  marked  contrast  with  this  variety  was  the  old 
high  and  dry  Tory  to  whom  *'  Church  and  King  *'  was 
a  shibboleth,  and  who  could  with  difficulty  believe  in 
any  kind  of  excellence,  moral,  social  or  political,  divorced 
from  the  idea  which  it  embodied.  The  greater  majority 
of  the  older  Dons  in  my  time  belonged  to  this  class  ; 
but  among  the  younger  ones,  who  were  soon  in  turn  to 
become  the  majority,  were  many  disciples  of  the  New 
School,  as  it  was  then  called,  who  had  imbibed  Toryism 
with  their  Catholicism  as  a  matter  of  course,  and  who  had 
not  made  shipwreck  of  their  faith.  ''  Our  wrecks  are  upon 
every  shore,''  said  a  member  of  the  Tractarian  party 
after  it  had  seemingly  gone  to  pieces  ;  but  enough  re- 
mained to  build  it  up  again,  and  these,  perhaps,  may  be 
called  the  Church  or  Anglican  Tories,  men  with  whom 
the  connection  of  Toryism  with  the  Church  of  England 
was  its  chief  title  to  their  regard.  Many  of  them  drew 
the  same  distinction  as  Lord  Beaconsfield  drew  between 
Toryism  and  Conservatism.  One  of  the  leaders  of  this 
party  was  William  Sewell,  senior  tutor  and  sub-rector 
of  Exeter  College,  who  in  his  admirable  novel  of 
"Hawkstone'*  lays  great  stress  on  this  distinction, 
and  illustrates  it  in  the  character  of  his  hero. 

With  these  three  different  streams  of  Tory  thought 
some,  perhaps,  might  include  a  fourth  in  the  shape  of 
what  was  then  coming  to  be  called  ''  Muscular  Chris- 


OXFORD    TORYISM.  301 

tianity.'*  Most  of  the  members  of  this  school  were  good 
Churchmen ;  but  I  don't  think  they  could  fairly  be 
styled  Tories  at  all.  Sewell  I  knew  very  well.  He  was 
a  very  able  man  ;  but  whether  he  was  a  good  college 
tutor  or  not  is  another  question.  He  set  himself,  as  a 
Tory  Churchman  of  the  Revival,  to  expose  and  resist 
the  policy  of  the  several  Governments  which  had  fol- 
lowed the  Reform  Bill  of  1832,  in  their  treatment  of  the 
Church  of  England.  He  had  nothing  in  common  with 
the  old  high  and  dry  Tory,  and  he  only  went  a  certain 
way  with  the  Tractarians.  He  was  a  bitter  anti- 
Romanist,  and  I  suppose  he  might  be  taken  as  one  of 
the  truest  representatives  of  the  Via  Media  which  that 
period  produced. 

But  the  road  was  too  narrow,  after  all.  I  don*t 
think  Sewell  found  that  he  made  much  way  in  Oxford, 
and  he  founded  Radley  as  a  college  specially  intended 
for  the  education  of  the  young  in  his  own  religious  prin- 
ciples. I  never  much  took  to  him,  and,  though  I  shared 
his  Church  opinions,  I  found  something  more  picturesque 
in  quite  a  different  class,  who  appealed  at  once  to  my 
sense  of  humour  and  my  eighteenth-century  sympathies. 
There  was  Dr.  Marsham,  the  lay-warden  of  Merton,  who 
had  occupied  this  enviable  position  since  1826.  He  was 
a  relation  of  Lord  Romney,  and  father  of  the  present 
police  magistrate.  He  was  a  tall,  handsome  man,  who 
used  to  walk  about  a  good  deal  with  his  dogs  in  a  stiff 
checked  neckcloth  and  rather  short  trousers,  such  as 
were  in  fashion  in  the  reign  of  George  IV. — such  as 
Pelham  wore  to  show  off  the  very  small  feet  of  which 
he  was  so  proud.  Marsham  was  a  dehghtful  survival 
of  that  period  ;  the  sight  of  him  carried  one  back  to  the 
pre-Reform  days  when  the  break-up  of  the  old  constitu- 


302  TORY   MEMORIES. 

tion  was  undreamed  of ;  when  the  old  order  seemed 
founded  on  a  rock,  though  it  turned  out  only  a  sand- 
hill. I  think  Dr.  Marsham  was  once  talked  of  as  a 
suitable  candidate  for  the  University  against  Gladstone  ; 
but  though  he  would  have  made  an  admirable  University 
member,  he  was  not  a  big  enough  man  to  pit  against 
Gladstone.  Among  my  memories  of  Oxford  Tories  his 
figure  stands  out  very  conspicuously. 

Another  such  man  was  Mucklestone,  Vice-Provost 
of  Worcester,  who,  however,  was  in  orders ;  but 
he,  too,  used  to  walk  out  with  his  setters  or  pointers, 
dressed,  of  course,  more  like  a  parson  that  Dr.  Marsham 
was,  but  in  a  style  which  implied  that  he  felt  himself 
quite  unbound  by  any  clerical  rule  upon  the  subject 
such  as  was  generally  observed  in  those  days  by  the 
college  authorities.  He,  too,  belonged  to  the  golden 
age  when  men  slumbered  peacefully  under  the  shadow 
of  ancient  institutions  in  blissful  unconsciousness  of 
the  coming  earthquake.  Another  excellent  specimen 
of  the  old  high  and  dry  man-of-the-world  school  was 
Mitchell,  at  one  time  Fellow  and  Tutor  of  Lincoln, 
afterwards  Vice-Principal  of  Magdalen  Hall.  He  was 
PubHc  Orator,  and  a  noted  authority  on  logic  ;  but  I 
question  if  he  was  up  to  date  in  ''  Sir  William  Hamilton  " 
or  *'  Mansel.**  I  have  heard  him  lecture,  and  I  doubt 
if  his  explanation  of  *'  second  intentions  ''  would  have 
commended  itself  to  those  eminent  authorities.  He 
was  much  looked  up  to  by  the  old  Tories,  and  was 
popular  with  the  undergraduates,  being  lenient  to  what 
were  called  youthful  indiscretions.  He  was  a  fine, 
portly  man,  would  have  made  an  excellent  head  of  a 
House,  and  in  former  days,  melioribus  annis,  he  might 
have  been  a  Bishop. 


OXFORD    TORYISM.  303 

A  very  different  character  indeed,  and  one  whom  I 
did  not  know  personally,  but  of  whom  everybody  spoke 
with  the  greatest  respect  and  veneration,  was  old  Dr. 
Routh,  President  of  Magdalen,  elected  in  1791.  He 
was  in  residence  when  Dr.  Johnson  visited  Oxford,  and 
perfectly  remembered  seeing  him  run  up  the  steps  of 
University  College  when  he  was  going  to  dine  in  hall  with 
his  friend  Mr.  Scott.  Perhaps  this  was  the  very  occasion 
on  which  Johnson  drank  three  bottles  of  port  in  Univer- 
sity Common  room,  "  without  being  the  worse  for  it.'* 
Dr.  Routh  had  witnessed  also  the  ceremony  of  drinking 
to  the  king  over  the  water,  a  practice  continued 
in  the  Magdalen  Common  room  down,  at  all  events,  to 
the  death  of  Charles  Edward  in  1788.  I  did  once  see 
Dr.  Routh  as  he  was  being  wheeled  about  in  his  chair. 
That  is  a  memory  of  which  I  am  really  proud.  To  have 
gazed  on  one  who  had  seen  Dr.  Johnson  at  Oxford,  and 
had  shared  in  the  last  empty  honours  ever  paid  to  the 
Stuarts  in  England,  was  indeed  a  privilege.  To  drink 
to  the  king  over  the  water  was  to  pass  your  glass,  after 
you  had  filled  it,  over  the  finger-bowl.  Dr.  Routh  died, 
I  think,  in  1855,  having  survived,  said  Newman,  ''  to 
recall  to  a  faithless  generation  what  was  the  theology 
of  their  forefathers.*'  He  might  also  have  recalled  to 
them  the  Toryism  of  their  forefathers,  such  as  was  pro- 
fessed by  Mr.  Pitt  and  Mr.  Canning.  Routh  was  one  of 
those  Tory  Churchmen  to  whom  the  torch,  burning 
dimly  indeed,  but  never  extinct,  had  been  handed  down 
through  Jones  of  Nayland  and  Sikes  of  Guilsborough, 
and  he  connects  one  directly  with  that  "  ancient  religion  ** 
which,  according  to  Newman,  had  before  the  middle  of 
the  nineteenth  century  nearly  died  out. 

Tommy  Short,  as  he  was  familiarly  called  by  every- 


304  TORY    MEMORIES. 

body  in  Oxford,  was  a  Fellow  of  Trinity,  and  a  well- 
known  figure  in  the  town.  Tommy,  I  believe,  was  a 
fine  scholar.  He  took  a  double  first  in  1812,  and  was  a 
Tory  of  the  pre-Reform  era,  though  he  probably  im- 
bibed his  ideas  rather  from  Eldon  and  Wetherell  than 
from  either  Canning  or  Pitt.  He  used  to  dress  in  black, 
except  his  neckcloth,  which  was  some  check  pattern, 
the  one  vanity  which  the  high  and  dry  permitted  them- 
selves. He,  too,  wore  quite  short  trousers  and  low 
shoes,  and  seemed  a  relic  of  the  past  even  more  than 
Marsham.  Short  was  a  very  able  man,  but  he  liked  to 
moisten  his  classics  with  a  glass  of  port,  and  after  that 
join  in  a  rubber  of  whist.  I  have  played  whist  in  the 
Common  room  at  Trinity  with  Thomas  looking  over 
my  shoulder,  but  never  played  at  his  table  ;  and,  indeed, 
by  that  time  he  had  come  to  prefer  quadrille,  to  which 
he  sat  down  on  the  evening  in  question  after  he  had 
watched  our  game  long  enough.  He  was,  in  his  day, 
quite  a  noted  character  in  Oxford,  and  was  a  perfect 
specimen  of  the  old  Oxford  Tory  with  all  his  honest 
prejudices,  all  his  good  port,  and  all  his  sound  Latin. 

Before  I  proceed  to  a  younger  generation,  I  must 
notice  another  of  the  old  ones,  in  the  person  of  Dr. 
Symonds,  the  Warden  of  Wadham  and  Vice-Chancellor, 
a  very  big  man,  who  used  to  ride  an  equally  stout  cob, 
and  was  a  very  familiar  object  to  all  the  undergraduates. 
I  have  often  heard  from  men  who  were  in  residence  in 
1848,  the  year  of  European  revolution,  that  some 
University  wags  pinned  up  on  the  door  of  the  Union 
a  revolutionary  proclamation  in  which  Symonds  figured. 
I  can't  remember  it  all,  but  I  recollect  a  couple  of 
sentences  :  ''  The  Proctors  have  resigned  their  usurped 
authority.     The  Vice-Chancellor  has  fled  on  horseback/' 


OXFORD    TORYISM.  305 

It  purported  to  be  issued  by  a  provisional  committee, 
among  the  members  of  which  was  '^Bossum  Operative/' 
Now,  Bossum  was  the  Brasenose  porter.  I  must  not,  how- 
ever, forget  Plumptre,  the  Head  of  University,  of  whom 
it  was  said  that  when  Thackeray  appUed  to  him,  as 
Vice-Chancellor,  for  leave  to  deliver  his  lectures  at 
Oxford,  and  told  him  he  was  a  contributor  to  Punch,  he 
inquired  gravely  if  Punch  was  not  ''  a  ribald  publication/' 
I  had  the  honour  of  Dr.  Pusey's  acquaintance,  and 
I  remember  calling  on  him  in  his  lodgings  off  the  City 
Road  when  he  went  to  live  there  at  the  time  of  the 
cholera  in  the  East  End  of  London.  Dr  Pusey  was  a 
gentleman  of  good  family,  who  had  been  fond  of  hunt- 
ing and  shooting  in  his  youth.  There  was  nothing  of 
the  Don  about  him  whatever.  He  was  one  of  those 
Oxford  Tories  who,  like  Sewell,  regarded  pohtics  chiefly 
from  a  Churchman's  point  of  view,  and,  hke  Dr.  Routh, 
he  supported  Gladstone  to  the  last.  He  was  on  his 
committee  in  1865,  and  by  that  time  he  had  ceased  to 
feel  any  confidence  in  either  the  will  or  the  power  of  the 
Conservative  party  to  uphold  the  best  interests  of  the 
Church  of  England.  But  the  Oxford  revival  of  1833 
was  a  Tory  movement,  and  Pusey  was  a  Tory  of  the 
Gladstone  stamp,  such  a  Tory  as  Gladstone  was  when  he 
thundered  against  the  Reform  Bill  in  the  Oxford  Union, 
such  a  Tory  as  was  the  author  of  *'  The  Church  in  Its 
Relation  to  the  State,"  such  a  Tory  as  Mr.  Gladstone 
still  continued  to  be  when  returned  for  the  University 
of  Oxford  in  1847,  beating  Mr.  Round  by  173  votes.  But 
Dr.  Pusey's  Toryism  depended  so  much  upon  his 
Anglicanism  that  he  had  ceased  to  regard  the  Conser- 
vatives as  true  Tories  any  longer.  This  did  not  prevent 
him  from  having  a  high  opinion  of  Lord  Beaconsfield, 
u 


3o6  TORY   MEMORIES. 

of  whom  he  often  spoke  very  kindly.  He  thought  that 
the  PubHc  Worship  Regulation  Act  was  rather  the  doing 
of  the  Archbishop  than  of  the  Prime  Minister ;  nor 
did  he  forget  the  tone  in  which  the  Church  of  England 
was  spoken  of  in  "  Sybil/'  or  the  portrait  of  Mr.  St.  Lys, 
the  High  Church  clergyman. 

Dr.  Pusey  was  well  acquainted  with  members  of  my 
own  family,  from  whom  I  have  heard  many  interesting 
particulars  relating  to  him.  But  the  following  story  is 
not  exclusively  traceable  to  any  individual.  It  is  no 
secret,  and  my  daughter  heard  it  from  some  friends 
abroad  two  or  three  years  ago.  Dr.  Pusey  firmly  believed 
himself  once  to  have  seen  the  apparition  of  a  departed 
friend ;  and  it  is  impossible  to  doubt  that  he  had 
experienced  something  which,  tightly  or  wrongly,  he 
sincerely  believed  to  be  a  supernatural  visitation.  The 
story,  though  it  has  never  before  been  printed,  is 
generally  known,  and  I  need  therefore  make  no  apology 
for  introducing  it  here.  He  was  taking  a  friend's  duty 
for  a  time  while  the  friend  went  away  for  a  rest  to  some 
other  village  in  the  neighbourhood.  Dr.  Pusey  stayed 
in  the  parsonage,  and  was  one  day  working  in  the  garden, 
when,  on  looking  up,  he  saw  his  friend  coming  towards 
him.  He  supposed  that  he  had  come  over  just  to 
see  how  things  were  going  on  and  to  have  a  talk  with 
himself ;  but  before  he  could  speak,  the  visitor  made  a 
communication  too  solemn  to  be  repeated  here,  and 
walked  away  towards  the  house.  Dr.  Pusey,  thinking 
only  that  his  friend's  mind  had  been  affected  by  his 
illness,  followed  him  into  the  house  for  luncheon.  When 
he  got  in  he  asked  the  servant, ''  Where  is  your  master  ?  '' 
''Master  has  not  been  here  to-day,  sir,"  said  the  man. 
Still  Dr.  Pusey  thought  nothing  of  this ;  but  when  he  went 


OXFORD    TORYISM.  307 

down  into  the  village  he  was  informed  by  one  of 
the  farmers  that  the  absent  vicar  had  died  that  morning, 
about  a  quarter  to  one,  the  very  time  when  Dr.  Pusey 
had  seen  him  in  the  garden.  A  relation  of  my  own 
now  living  at  Oxford,  who  had  previously  heard  it  from 
another  quarter,  asked  Dr.  Pusey,  with  whom  she  was 
closely  acquainted,  whether  it  was  true,  and  he  replied 
that  it  was. 

Dr.  Pusey  has  been  charged  with  encouraging  young 
girls  to  neglect  their  home  duties,  and  even  leave  their 
famiUes,  in  order  to  join  sisterhoods,  and  embrace  the 
rehgious  life.  My  own  memory  enables  me  to  contra- 
dict this  report,  or,  at  least,  to  show  that  Dr.  Pusey, 
before  giving  any  such  advice,  was  very  careful  to  ascer- 
tain what  the  young  lady's  position  in  her  own  family 
really  was — whether  an  only  daughter,  whether  her 
parents  were  old  or  infirm  and  stood  in  need  of  her 
assistance,  and  when  these  questions  were  answered  in 
the  affirmative,  the  votary's  inclinations,  however  laud- 
able in  themselves,  were  discouraged.  I  know  that 
this  happened  in  the  case  of  a  near  relation,  and  I  have 
no  reason  to  believe  it  was  a  solitary  instance. 

Dr.  Pusey  is  well  known,  in  common  with  Keble  and 
Newman,  to  have  always  recognised  the  influence  of  the 
Waverley  novels  in  leading  to  the  Anglican  revival. 
Keble,  no  doubt,  was  under  the  spell  when  he  wrote 
*'  The  Christian  Year,''  wrongly,  as  already  pointed  out, 
attributed  to  myself  (  !  ),  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  of 
their  effect  upon  the  mind  of  Hurrell  Froude ;  but, 
quite  apart  from  the  leaders  of  the  movement,  these 
immortal  works  must  have  prepared  the  public  mind  in 
general  for  the  seed  which  was  about  to  fall  upon 
it. 


3o8  TORY   MEMORIES. 

Newman  himself  I  never  met ;  and  I  cannot  include 
him  among  my  personal  memories  ;  but  I  have  always 
treasured  up  one  sentence  of  his  which  occurs  in  a  letter 
to  a  lady  who  had  consulted  him  about  the  Roman  and 
Anglican  systems.  He  said,  ''  If  our  Lord  left  a  visible 
Church  on  earth,  I  believe  it  is  the  Catholic  Roman 
Church/'  but  he  added  that  the  question  was  beset  with 
so  many  difficulties  that  he  would  not  incur  the  respon- 
sibility of  advising  anyone  to  leave  the  Church  of 
England  for  the  Church  of  Rome.  This,  I  think,  runs 
a  Uttle  counter  to  the  popular  prejudice  about  Newman. 

Oxford  has  been  called  ''  the  home  of  lost  causes.*' 
I  fail  to  see  the  justice  of  this  description.  The  cause 
espoused  by  the  Oxford  movement  of  1833  is  so  far 
from  being  a  lost  cause  that,  rightly  understood,  it  has 
been  victorious  along  the  whole  line.  To  appreciate 
the  result  one  must  be  able,  as  I  am,  to  remember  the 
condition  of  the  Church  and  the  clergy,  especially  in 
the  rural  districts,  as  they  were  when  Newman  left 
the  Church  of  England  in  despair,  and  as  they  are  now. 
It  is  not  all  at  once  that  the  fruits  of  a  great  movement 
ploughing  up  soil  which  had  lain  fallow  for  a  century, 
and  disturbing  settled  opinions  to  which  long  habit 
and  custom  had  given  the  force  of  principles,  are  visible 
on  the  surface.  More  than  a  whole  generation  was  to 
pass  away  before  the  thorough  transformation  which  the 
Church  was  destined  to  experience  began  to  manifest 
itself,  and  even  after  the  lapse  of  two  more  it  is  not  yet 
complete.  The  change  has  been  so  gradual  as  almost 
to  escape  notice.  It  has,  of  course,  been  accompanied 
by  innovations  and  irregularities  of  so  startHng  a  charac- 
ter as  to  attract  universal  attention.  But  these  are 
only  the  rocks  which  the  stream  encounters  in  its  course, 


OXFORD    TORYISM.  309 

foaming  and  fretting  round  them  so  as  to  fix  the  gazer's 
eye,  while  its  main  current  flows  quietly  and  smoothly 
on  with  scarce  a  trickle  or  a  murmur  to  show  us  that 
it  really  moves. 

Lost  causes  may  have  come  home  to  die  at  Oxford  ; 
but  the  Anglo-Catholic  cause  is  certainly  not  among 
them.  The  aphorism  may  possibly  be  justified  by  the 
fate  of  Latin  prose.  Elegiacs,  we  have  been  told,  are 
already  a  lost  cause.  I  write  these  words  with  pain, 
for  I  have  many  pleasant  memories  connected  with 
longs  and  shorts  ;  and  I  shall  never  regret  that  I  was 
guilty  of  two  false  quantities  in  eight  lines,  when  I 
remember  that  the  wretched  man  who  failed  to  detect 
them  was  not  a  Tory.  When  ''  causes  ''  of  any  kind 
fall  into  the  hands  of  such  men  as  these,  no  wonder 
they  are  lost ! 

Mansel,  afterwards  Dean  of  St.  Paul's,  I  remember 
well.  He  was  a  disciple  of  Sir  William  Hamilton,  who 
really  revolutionised  the  metaphysic  and  logic  of  the 
Oxford  Schools.  He  was  a  very  able  and  a  very  witty 
man,  and  perhaps  his  verses  published  at  Commemora- 
tion, in  ridicule,  if  I  remember  right,  of  the  German  pro- 
fessorial system,  then  much  favoured  by  the  Univer- 
sity Commissioners,  and  advocated  by  that  very  able 
man,  Halford  Vaughan,  Professor  of  Modern  History, 
will  be  remembered  as  long  as  his  logic.  Mansel,  like 
the  healthy  old  Tory  he  was,  defended  the  old  collegiate 
system  and  tutorial  instruction.  I  can't  remember 
many  of  his  verses,  but  they  began  in  this  way  : 

Professors  we  from  over  the  sea 
From  the  land  where  professors  in  plenty  be, 
The  land  which  boasts  one  Kant  with  a  K 
And  a  great  many  cants  with  a  C. 


310  TORY   MEMORIES. 

Mansel  took  a  double  first  in  company  with  his  old 
schoolfellow,  Paul  Parnell,  who  died,  I  think,  in  Aus- 
tralia ;  and  he  was  soon  established  as  the  leading 
science  coach  at  Oxford.  One  of  his  favourite  pupils 
was  Palin,  of  St.  John's,  and  when  my  own  time  came 
to  go  into  training,  I  went  into  that  stable. 

I  believe  my  science  papers  did  my  trainer  justice  ; 
but  I  had  neglected  other  subjects,  and  Cowley  Powles 
demonstrated  with  cruel  precision  that  I  had  never  read 
my  Livy  since  I  left  school.  The  consequence  was  that 
I  dropped  into  a  second,  and  was  only  saved  from  a 
worse  fate,  as  Mark  Pattison  not  obscurely  hinted,  by  a 
copy  of  Latin  elegiacs,  which  pleased  the  examiners 
and  caused  me  to  say  just  now  that  I  had  many  pleasant 
memories  connected  with  that  classic  metre. 

Mark  Pattison  I  knew  well.  He  was  the  head  of 
my  college  after  I  left  Exeter,  and  I  saw  a  good  deal 
of  him  afterwards  in  London.  I  remember  his  saying 
what  a  curious  thing  it  was  that  no  book  had  ever 
been  written  with  the  exclusive  object  of  showing  the 
benefits  which  Christianity  had  conferred  upon  the 
world.  I  suggested  Swift's  reason  for  not  abolishing 
Christianity,  which  seemed  to  tickle  him. 

I  have  just  mentioned  Halford  Vaughan.  Him,  too,  I 
knew  in  the  country  ;  for  he  was  very  fond  of  hunting, 
and  used  to  take  a  house  in  my  father's  parish,  near  to 
Wistow,  for  that  purpose.  It  was  said  by  somebody 
that  Halford  Vaughan  and  Edward  Twistleton  were  the 
two  cleverest  men  in  England.  It  is  something  to  have 
known  one  of  them,  at  all  events.  Vaughan  used  to 
hunt  with  the  Vale  of  White  Horse,  and  on  non-lecture 
days,  which  in  his  reign  were  pretty  frequent,  he 
might  often  be  seen  trotting  out  as  fast  as   an  Oxford 


OXFORD    TORYISM.  311 

hack  would  carry  him  to  meet  the  V.W.H.  or  the  old 
Berkshire. 

I  did  not  know  Brocket  of  St.  Duns  tan's  person- 
ally ;  but  he  was  the  hero  of  a  story  too  good  to  be 
omitted,  and  was  himself  a  distinguished  man.  I  was 
once  staying  with  a  friend  down  in  Wiltshire,  when  I 
met  a  rollicking  sporting  parson,  who  had  been  at  St. 
Dunstan's  when  Brocket  was  tutor  there.  There  are 
some  elements  of  improbability  in  the  story  as  he  told 
it,  I  must  own,  but  I  have  no  doubt  that  the  facts  were 
substantially  correct.  While  an  undergraduate  at  St. 
Dunstan's  he  was  dining  out  at  a  dinner  party  where 
Brocket  was  present — such  was  his  tale — and  when  the 
dessert  was  placed  on  the  table,  the  children  came  down, 
as  usual  in  those  days,  and  were  expected  to  kiss  the 
company  all  round.  One  little  girl  refused  to  kiss 
Mr.  Brocket,  whereupon  she  was  scolded  and  told  to  kiss 
the  gentleman  at  once.  She  still  refused,  and  being 
asked  the  reason  why,  gave  as  her  grievance  that  when 
she  went  out  walking  with  Mary,  ''  Mr.  Brocket  always 
kisses  Mary  and  he  never  kisses  me.''  Poor  Brocket ! 
He  was  not  a  popular  man  in  college,  and,  what  is  more, 
at  this  time  he  was  Proctor.  And  the  little  girl's  words 
were  spoken  out  loud  before  a  large  party. 

Off  rushed  my  informant,  as  soon  as  he  could  decently 
get  away,  flew  back  to  college,  and  burst  in  upon  a 
supper  party  which  he  knew  to  be  going  on  with  this 
delightful  tale.  The  men  waited  till  they  knew  that 
Brocket  was  back  in  his  rooms,  and  then  they  salHed 
forth  in  a  body  and  sang  the  words  under  his  windows  : 
"  He  always  kisses  Mary,  and  he  never  kisses  me." 
The  hank  which  they  thus  acquired  over  this  unhappy 
Don  was  a  joy  to  those  many  undergraduates  who  hated 


312  TORY   MEMORIES. 

him.  I  don't  know  how  long  the  joke  was  kept  up  ; 
but  I  remember  that  when  I  was  at  Oxford  some  years 
afterwards,  the  story  was  still  in  general  circulation, 
though  it  was  not  till  much  later  that  I  fell  in  with  the 
gifted  author  of  it,  who,  I  presume,  was  recording  a  per- 
'sonal  experience.  It  may  have  been,  and  probably 
was,  embellished  ;  but  that  some  little  Mary  had  been 
neglected  and  some  grown-up  Mary  had  been  kissed  is 
what,  I  sadly  fear,  we  must  believe. 

Brocket,  I  beheve,  was  a  severe  proctor.  How 
different  from  the  good  little  Pro.  in  my  own  college, 
who,  when  I  unfortunately  met  with  an  accident  among 
some  rude  boys  at  Godstow,  having  in  lawful  self-defence 
received  a  blow  in  the  eye,  which  betrayed  itself  in 
the  usual  way,  gently  observed,  '*  You  know,  Mr.  Kebbel, 
a  man  may  go  through  life  without  doing  these  things.'* 
And  that  was  all  he  said ;  a  broad-minded,  genial  Tory, 
with  wide  human  sympathies  ! 


CHAPTER   XX. 

TORY   INNS. 

Rival  Inns — Tory  Inns  on  the  Road  to  London — A  Tory  Tavern- 
keeper's  Horror  of  Mechanics'  Institutes — ^Tory  Shops  and  Whig 
Shops — A  Candid  Tory  Fishmonger — ^The  Engine-driver  and  the 
Statesman. 

In  his  description  of  the  inns  at  Eatanswill,  Dickens 
was  drawing  no  fancy  picture.  I  remember  the  times 
when  party  feehng  ran  quite  as  high.  In  the  palmy 
days  of  '*  the  Road  '*  all  travellers  were  familiar  with 
the  rivalry  which  existed  between  Whig  and  Tory  post- 
ing houses.  Not  that  they  were  called  by  those  names. 
They  were  blue  or  yellow,  or  green  or  red,  as  the  case 
might  be,  the  Whig  buff  being  always  called  yellow. 
The  distinction  still  survives  in  holes  and  corners  of 
old  England,  and  in  the  far  west  you  may  still, 
here  and  there,  find  some  ancient  hostelry  which  clings 
to  its  political  traditions.  I  am  old  enough  to  re- 
member the  last  of  the  posting  days,  when  the  steam- 
engine  was  just  beginning  to  tread  on  the  heels  of 
the  post-horse,  and  to  supplant  the  stage-coach,  as  the 
motor-car  supplants  the  omnibus.  We  used  at  one 
time  to  post  up  to  London  from  Leicestershire  in 
an  old-fashioned  chariot  of  our  own,  by  way  of 
Northampton,  Woburn,  Dunstable,  St.  Albans,  and 
Barnet.  All  along  the  road  there  were  inns  which  had 
a  party  bias. 

3^3 


314  TORY    MEMORIES. 

But  before  describing  what  I  can  remember  of  those 
days,  I  must  premise  that  in  Leicester  itself,  which 
was  our  county  town,  the  blue  inn  and  the  green  inn 
had  no  deahngs  with  each  other.  The  ''  Three  Crowns  " 
was  the  headquarters  of  the  Tory  interest,  the  *'  Bell  '* 
being  patronised  by  the  green  faction — for  in  Leicester 
green  was  the  Whig  colour.  As  most  of  the  Leicestershire 
gentry  were  Tories,  the  *'  Crowns  ''  used  to  boast  of 
the  larger  show  of  private  carriages  in  the  stable 
yard  on  Saturdays,  and  did  more,  I  should  think,  in 
the  way  of  luncheons  ;  but  then  the  "  Bell  '*  had  the 
better  cook,  and  latterly  I  think  the  hunting  men  who 
came  to  Leicester  lived  at  the  ''  Bell."  But  at  the 
time  I  am  thinking  of  the  ''  Crowns  ''  was  the  leading 
inn.  I  can  see  old  Bishop  now — there  were  no 
"  managers ''  or  companies  in  those  days  :  the  landlord 
stood  at  the  door  to  welcome  you  himself — and  Bishop 
was  the  beau  ideal  of  the  old-fashioned  Boniface.  A 
stout,  fresh-coloured  man,  who  valued  his  own  posi- 
tion as  landlord  of  the  great  Tory  inn  in  the  great  town 
of  Leicester,  and  held  himself  entitled  to  look  down 
upon  all  the  green  ragamuffins  who  frequented  the 
"  Bell.*'  He  felt  that  he  represented  the  aristocracy 
of  the  county,  the  real  blue  blood.  And  there  he  stood 
at  his  door  :  looking  all  this  and  more,  ready  to  ex- 
change a  joke  with  his  more  valued  customers,  who 
allowed  him  a  good  many  liberties,  but  quite  ready 
to  stand  upon  his  dignity  with  others  not  entitled  in 
his  eyes  to  equal  familiarity.  Those  were  not  the 
days  of  photography,  or  I  should  certainly  have  had 
his  portrait. 

All  the  way  up  to  London,  if   I   remember  right, 
the  post-boys  belonging  to  the  Tory  inns  in  one  town 


TORY    INNS.  315 

drove  to  the  Tory  inns  in  the  next.  AtJNorthampton 
it  was  the  ''  George/'  which,  I  beUeve,  is  still  flourish- 
ing. At  Newport  Pagnell,  the  next  stage,  it  was  the 
''  Swan.''  At  Woburn  the  ''  George  "  again.  At  Dun- 
stable the  ''  Sugar  Loaf."  At  St.  Albans  I  have  for- 
gotten, but  I  think  it  was  the  "  Verulam  Arms."  At 
Barnetitwas  the  "  Green  Man  and  Still,"  the  opposition 
house  being  the  ''  Red  Lion "  ;  and  I  recollect  that 
once  when  I  was  a  very  small  boy  we  were  driven 
to  the  *'  Red  Lion  "  by  mistake,  and  the  post-boy  was 
promptly  ordered  to  turn  back  to  the  *'  Green  Man." 
I  don't  know  how  long  these  distinctions  survived 
in  London  ;  but  I  have  known  one  London  inn-keeper 
of  the  deepest  Tory  dye,  who  was  not  ashamed  to  con- 
fess his  faith  in  any  company.  He  kept  an  ordinary 
in  Newgate  Street — the  same  house,  I  believe,  which 
Charles  Lamb  used  to  frequent — and  I  remember  some 
choice  sentiments  from  his  lips.  I  often  dined  there, 
for  you  got  a  very  good  dinner  indeed  at  a  very  cheap 
rate,  the  landlord  making  his  profit  out  of  the  ale, 
wine,  and  whiskey  consumed  by  his  customers.  A 
propos  of  this,  he  told  us  one  day  of  two  men  who  used 
to  dine  there  regularly,  eat  all  they  could,  and  drink 
only  water,  and  who,  on  going  out,  said  to  him  more 
than  once  :  ''  Landlord,  we  can't  think  how  you  make 
this  pay."  But  this  is  not  what  I  was  going  to  mention. 
We  were  talking  one  day  of  the  early  closing  move- 
ment, to  which  he  expressed  himself  as  strongly 
opposed.  ''  What's  the  good,"  he  said,  ''  of  letting 
young  men  go  away  much  earlier  ?  They  only  go  to 
public-houses  or  casinos  ;  or  else  to  Mechanics'  Insti- 
tutes, which  is  ten  thousand  times  worse  J'  After  this, 
the  reader  will  not  be  surprised  to  hear  of  the  condi- 


3i6  TORY    MEMORIES. 

tion  to  which  he  was  reduced  one  evening  when  a  City 
election  had  gone  against  us.  I  found  him  standing 
in  front  of  his  house,  in  the  middle  of  the  street, 
without  his  hat,  with  his  hands  raised  to  heaven, 
after  the  manner  of  iEneas,  in  an  attitude  of  silent 
despair  and  unutterable  mental  agony.  I  shall  never 
forget  him.  '*  Respicis  hcBC  ?'^  he  seemed  to  be  saying 
to  the  Ruler  of  the  Universe. 

How  many  of  the  old  inns  that  I  have  mentioned 
are  now  standing  I  don't  know.  The  last  man  who  ever 
sought  refreshment  at  the  ''  Crowns ''  was  offered  a 
jam  puff  for  supper,  the  only  article  of  food  the  house 
contained.  It  is  pulled  down  now,  and  other  build- 
ings erected  on  the  site.  I  know  nothing  of  the  others. 
All  that  I  have  named  were,  in  the  days  referred  to, 
comfortable  quarters,  like  the  ''  Saracen's  Head "  at 
Towcester,  where  you  were  sure  of  a  good  dinner,  good 
wine,  and  good  beds.  I  remember  sleeping  all  night 
at  the  Woburn  inn,  which,  I  suppose,  however,  was  not 
a  Tory  one,  and  walking  in  the  abbey  gardens  after- 
wards. I  hear  that  bicycling  and  motoring  are  likely 
to  resuscitate  some  of  these  old  country  inns,  but  they 
can't  revive  the  life  which  formerly  throbbed  in  them  : 
the  carriage  and  four  rattling  up  to  the  front  with  some 
great  man  inside,  and  the  cheery  cry  of  *'  Horses  on," 
which  set  all  the  ostlers  in  a  bustle  ;  the  mail  coach  with 
its  cargo  of  passengers  all  alighting  to  partake  of  the 
coach  dinner,  which  was  always  very  good,  though  it 
had  to  be  eaten  in  a  hurry  ;  the  constant  stream  of 
traffic,  the  horses,  the  waggons,  the  bagman's  gig, 
the  drover's  herd — these  will  not  come  back  with  the 
motors.  I  am  glad  I  can  remember  that  I  once  rode 
in  that  odd  little  vehicle  called  a  post-chaise,  or  I  should 


TORY    INNS.  317 

never  have  appreciated  Mr.  Pickwick's  journey  from 
Bristol  to  Birmingham. 

Not  only  were  there  Tory  inns  in  the  old  days  : 
there  were  Tory  shops  and  Whig  shops.  I  remember 
very  well  when  a  blue  family  in  the  county  bought 
some  grocery,  I  think  it  was,  from  a  shopkeeper  in 
Leicester  whose  principles  were  notoriously  green,  that 
their  conduct  was  very  generally  condemned.  The 
circumstance  was  a  good  deal  talked  about,  and  fears 
were  expressed  in  some  quarters  that  the  example  might 
be  catching.  One  of  the  principal  booksellers  in  the 
town  was  one  of  the  few  remaining  shopkeepers  who 
hung  up  a  sign  over  his  doors — namely,  the  Bible  and 
the  Crown.  There  was  a  blue  tailor  and  a  green  tailor, 
a  blue  shoemaker  and  a  green  shoemaker,  a  blue 
draper  and  a  green  draper.  I  don't  think  matters 
went  so  far  as  they  did  at  Eatanswill,  or  that  there 
was  a  green  aisle  and  a  blue  aisle  in  any  of  the  churches  ; 
but  in  other  respects  the  picture  drawn  in  ''  Pickwick  '* 
is  hardly  exaggerated. 

An  influential  Tory  shopkeeper  was  then  an  im- 
portant personage,  as  to  some  extent  he  may  be  still. 
Pike,  the  fishmonger,  had,  I  think,  nearly  all  the 
county  custom.  He  was  a  clever,  jocular,  impudent 
fellow,  who  exchanged  jokes  with  all  the  gentlemen 
who  visited  his  shop,  and  was  allowed  a  good  many 
freedoms  on  account  of  his  colour.  One  of  the  county 
members,  remarking  one  day  on  some  pheasants  which 
hung  up  in  the  shop,  was  told  that  he  would  see  some 
finer  ones  if  he  would  step  into  the  back  room.  He  did 
so,  and  found  himself  in  an  airy  apartment  literally 
loaded  with  pheasants.  ''  Yes,  they  are  fine  birds," 
said  the  Tory  member.     ''  They  all  come  from  Prest- 


3i8  TORY    MEMORIES. 

wold,  sir/'  said  the  Tory  salesman,  with  a  grin.  Now, 
Prestwold  was  the  member's  seat,  and  the  birds  were 
the  produce  of  a  poaching  raid  upon  his  covers.  The 
member  could  only  smile  and  look  pleasant,  for  it  would 
never  have  done  to  quarrel  with  Pike. 

Party  spirit  penetrated  into  every  hole  and  corner 
of  the  community.  It  reached  even  railway  guards, 
stokers,  and  engine  drivers.  I  remember  the  reply  of 
a  Midland  driver  who  was  proud  of  his  engine  and  of 
himself,  and  regarded  railways  with  veneration.  We 
were  talking  in  his  presence  about  an  eminent  states- 
man, now  deceased,  who  inspired  both  love  and  hatred 
in  a  very  uncommon  degree.  He  often  travelled  by 
the  train  which  the  engine-driver  steered,  and  some- 
one said,  in  joke,  ''  Couldn't  you  contrive  to  drive 
over  him  ?  "  *'  Such  a  death/'  said  the  man,  ''  would 
be  too  good  for  him  !  " 


CHAPTER    XXI. 

OUR   VILLAGE. 
Toirplv    eir    elp-^vrj^i,    irpiv    ekOelv    vla^   ^A'^aicoV 

The  Village  Described — ^The  Vicar — Farmer  Dryman — John  Ashcot  the 
Yeoman — The  Village  Blacksmith — Farmer  Wright — A  True  Blue — 
The  Feast — Christmas  Celebrations — The  Parish  Clerk — An  Anti- 
nomian  Dissenter — A  Versatile  Constable — Village  Termagants — 
The  Scythe  and  the  Flail — A  Happy  and  Contented  Population — The 
Clothing  Club — The  Old  Poor  Law  and  the  New. 

I  HAVE  introduced  my  native  village  in  previous  chap- 
ters, but  I  think  some  further  notice  of  it  may  form 
a  fitting  sequel  to  the  rambling  recollections  which 
have  carried  me  so  far  from  home.  I  now  return  to 
the  spot  whence  I  started  when  I  received  the  letter 
which  determined  my  future  career.  One  who  can 
recollect  village  life  as  it  was  sixty  years  ago  can  recol- 
lect something  which  is  fast  passing  away,  if  it  has  not 
already  vanished  ;  and  with  that  respect  for  antiquity 
which  becomes  a  Tory,  I  am  impelled  to  recall  some 
features  of  it  while  they  still  remain  fresh  in  my  memory. 
I  have,  as  a  general  rule,  in  these  reminiscences,  given 
the  real  names  of  the  persons  and  places  introduced 
in  them.  In  the  following  description  they  appear 
under  various  pseudonyms,  the  reasons  for  which  will 
perhaps  become  apparent  to  my  readers  as  the  picture 
gradually  unfolds  itself.  This  chapter  is  strictly  con- 
sistent with  what  has  gone  before,  because  Toryism 
is  closely  associated  with  the  history  of  the  peasantry, 

319 


320  TORY    MEMORIES. 

and  the  measures  undertaken  for  their  benefit  both  in 
the  eighteenth  and  the  nineteenth  century.  It  may  be 
news  to  some  of  my  readers  that  something  very  like 
"  three  acres  and  a  cow ''  was  suggested  by  Mr.  Pitt 
himself. 

Some  of  the  remarks  on  this  subject  which  will 
be  found  further  on  are,  in  substance,  a  repetition  of 
what  I  pointed  out  in  my  little  work  styled  ''  The  Old 
and  The  New/*  in  the  chapter  on  the  peasantry ;  but 
my  personal  recollections  of  the  effect  produced  upon 
the  rural  mind  by  the  legislation  of  1834,  ^^  soon  as 
it  came  into  full  operation,  must  not  be  omitted  from 
my  Tory  memories,  contrasting,  as  it  does,  with  the  al- 
leviations of  poverty  proposed  by  the  rival  political  party. 

Our  village  lies  in  a  shallow  valley  in  the  heart  of 
the  midland  counties.  You  descend  to  it  from  the 
high  road  by  a  narrow  lane  leading  down  to  a  small 
stream  which  sixty  years  ago  was  crossed  only  by  a  foot- 
bridge, and  in  a  heavy  flood  was  impassable.  Imme- 
diately beyond  it  the  road  made  a  sharp  turn,  and  the 
village  street,  or,  as  it  was  always  called,  ''  the  town 
street,*'  lay  straight  before  you.  On  the  other  side 
of  the  village  the  ground  sank  again  down  to  a  consider- 
able brook,  which  in  those  days  held  plenty  of  coarse 
fish — pike,  perch,  and  chub.  At  the  time  referred  to, 
the  population  of  the  village  was  about  four  hundred, 
the  cottagers  consisting  in  almost  equal  proportions  of 
farm  labourers  and  framework  knitters,  or  ''  stock- 
ingers,**  who  hired  their  frames  from  the  county  town, 
and  took  their  work  in  when  completed.  The  singing 
of  their  frames  was  a  pleasant,  cheerful  sound,  not  un- 
like the  note  of  the  yellow-hammer  ;  and  as  in  those 
days  a  large  amount  of  work  was  given  out  by  the 


OUR    VILLAGE.  321 

wholesale  firms,  they  were  seldom  silent.  You  may 
listen  for  them  in  vain  now.  There  were,  of  course, 
as  in  all  country  villages,  the  usual  small  tradesmen, 
the  butcher,  the  baker,  the  blacksmith,  the  carpenter, 
the  shopkeeper,  and  the  innkeeper.  The  church  and 
the  parsonage  stood  at  a  little  distance  from  the  village, 
the  latter  embowered  in  trees,  so  skilfully  arranged 
that  the  house  and  grounds  at  a  little  distance  might 
have  been  mistaken  for  the  Hall. 

I  have  already  introduced  my  reader  to  the  vicar. 
I  must  be  pardoned  if  fiUal  partiality  seduces  me  into 
further  notice  of  him.  He  was  not  a  sportsman ;  but 
he  was  fond  of  his  garden,  fond  of  his  pigs  and  his 
poultry  and  of  the  small  farm,  consisting  of  about  fifty 
acres  of  glebe,  which  he  kept  in  his  own  hands.  *'  A 
man  he  was  to  all  the  country  dear,*'  and  at  the  time  I 
am  writing  of  was  about  sixty  years  of  age.  He  had 
held  the  living  then  for  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century  ; 
and  besides  being  a  general  favourite  with  the  cot- 
tagers and  the  farmers,  he  had  all  the  influence  of 
the  squire  at  his  back.  The  vicar  winked  at  the 
faults  of  his  parishioners  perhaps  a  little  too  much ; 
but  he  was,  naturally,  none  the  less  beloved  on  that 
account.  The  two  Hvings,  which  he  held  together,  were 
not  worth  more  than  £300  a  year  ;  but  he  had  a  small 
fortune  of  his  own,  which  enabled  him  to  live  on  equal 
terms  with  the  neighbouring  gentry  and  Squarsons,  to 
dine  with  them  and  give  dinners  in  return,  and  to  lose 
half  a  sovereign  at  whist  without  being  guilty  of  any 
gross  extravagance. 

In  these  remote  country  villages,  seven  or  eight 
miles  from  any  market  town,  before  the  days  of  rail- 
roads, penny  papers,  or  primary  schools,  all  things 
v 


322  TORY    MEMORIES. 

must  have  always  seemed  the  same  from  a  very  remote 
period.  Unaffected  by  the  outer  world,  and  by  that 
vague  but  irritating  censorship  called  public  opinion, 
the  idiosyncrasy  of  the  villagers  was  allowed  to  develop 
itself  freely ;  and  though  we  could  not  boast  a  Mrs.  Poy- 
ser,  the  parson  could  hardly  make  his  round  among  the 
cottages  and  farmhouses,  especially  if  he  went  about 
tea-time,  without  having  something  racy  to  repeat  to 
his  family  at  dinner. 

At  the  bottom  of  the  village  or  '*  town,'*  as  the 
street  turned  off  towards  the  high  road  aforesaid, 
dwelt  Farmer  Dryman,  an  excellent  specimen  of  the 
old  school.  He  was  the  clergyman's  churchwarden  and 
right-hand  man  in  the  parish  ;  but  he  was  a  somewhat 
testy  old  gentleman,  and  looked  with  a  very  sour  coun- 
tenance on  the  parson's  youngsters  when  they  climbed 
over  into  his  stack-yard  or  fell-to  talking  with  the  men 
threshing  in  the  big  barn,  interrupting  their  work,  as 
he  complained.  But  his  wife,  a  very  clever  woman, 
was  the  character  of  the  village.  The  house  faced  the 
road,  but  there  was  a  narrow  side  window  at  one  end 
which  looked  straight  up  the  street.  Here  she  was 
to  be  seen  at  all  hours  of  the  day ;  and  not  a  soul  could 
move  about  the  village,  nor  a  cart  stop  at  a  farm- 
house, nor  a  visitor  call  at  the  parsonage,  but  she  knew 
all  about  it.  The  window  was  known  to  the  natives 
as  *'  the  turnpike,"  and  it  is  needless  to  say  that  the 
owner  of  it  was  mistress  of  all  the  scandal  which  the 
parish  afforded,  and  knew  of  all  the  births  and  deaths 
— who  were  coming  into  the  world  and  who  were  going 
out  of  it — sooner  even  than  the  parish  clerk.  The  old 
man  belonged  to  that  old-fashioned  race  of  farmers 
who    left  field  sports  to  the  ''  quality/'  and  the    first 


OUR   VILLAGE.  323 

time  he  heard  of  his  son  going  out  hunting  he  refused  to 
eat  his  dinner. 

Nearly  opposite  Dryman's  was  the  abode  of  a  very 
different  kind  of  man.  Dryman  used  to  come  to  church 
dressed  very  much  Hke  Mr.  Poyser,  with  drab  coat 
and  breeches,  and  a  richly-flowered  waistcoat.  His 
opposite  neighbour,  who  was  comparatively  a  newcomer, 
went  in  for  gentility,  always  dressed  in  black  on 
Sunday,  with  a  black  satin  waterfall  cravat  and  no 
shirt  collar,  as  you  may  see  in  the  portraits  of  Prince 
Albert  and  Charles  Dickens.  There  was  a  strong  spice 
of  radicalism  in  this  vain  man,  and  he  had  been  heard 
to  say  that  he  believed  Latin  was  a  very  much  over- 
rated language. 

Further  along,  on  the  same  side  of  the  street,  stood 
the  house  of  our  one  yeoman,  old  John  Ashcot.  It  was 
a  substantial  red  brick  house,  covered  with  lichens,  with 
a  capital  kitchen  garden,  and,  as  Harriet  Smith  says  in 
"  Emma,'*  *^  with  two  parlours,  two  very  good  parlours 
indeed,*'  and  everything  substantial  about  it.  The 
Ashcots  had  been  on  the  land  for  generations,  but  they 
made  no  pretence  of  ever  having  been  other  than  they 
then  were.  They  were  comfortable  people,  and  the 
Ashcot  of  my  time,  then  about  fifty,  after  dinner  on  a 
fine  day,  loved  to  stand  out  in  the  street  in  front  of  his 
door,  slightly  swaying  to  and  fro  under  the  influence 
of  brown  brandy,  but  quite  conversible  and  affable, 
with  a  beaming  smile  for  every  passer-by.  He  was  not 
a  man  with  a  very  wide  range  of  ideas,  and  had  views  of 
pubhc  affairs  when  they  chanced  to  come  before  him 
which  were,  no  doubt,  racy  of  the  soil,  but  savoured 
rather  of  the  stable  and  the  pig-sty  than  of  any  wider 
or  more  imperial  field  of  thought.     He  was  the  author 


324  TORY    MEMORIES. 

of  the  theory  quoted  on  another  page,  that  it  was  no 
good  having  soldiers  if  they  did  not  fight;  they  were 
only  eating  their  heads  off.  His  wife  had  the  reputa- 
tion of  liking  a  drop  as  well  as  her  husband,  though 
she  showed  no  signs  of  it  in  her  face ;  but  then,  as 
Mrs.  Dryman  said,  ''  she  was  a  white  drinker.*' 

Further  up  the  village  on  the  same  side  of  the  way 
was  the  blacksmith's  forge,  the  blacksmith  himself 
being  a  good-humoured,  beery  man,  who,  when  rebuked 
by  the  vicar  for  not  going  oftener  to  church,  replied 
most  respectfully  that  the  parson  had  all  his  custom, 
the  Methodies  not  standing  high  in  his  opinion.  He 
did  a  very  good  business,  and  was  a  very  popular  man, 
one  of  the  few  to  whom  the  parson's  children  were 
allowed  to  go  out  to  tea  at  the  village  feast.  Nearly 
opposite  the  blacksmith's  dwelt  a  small  dairy  farmer, 
loved  for  his  Stilton  cheese,  and  feared  for  his  short- 
horned  bull,  who  was  generally  turned  out  with  the  cows 
in  a  field  at  the  top  of  the  village,  through  which  ran 
the  public  road.  None  of  the  cross-roads  in  that  part 
of  the  country  were  divided  from  the  fields  by  hedges, 
so  that  the  sheep  and  cattle  often  came  upon  the  road, 
and  the  lowering  countenance  of  the  bull  might  be 
seen  sometimes  blocking  a  gateway,  a  sight  which  never 
failed  to  make  the  vicar's  wife  turn  back  from  her 
evening  walk.  There  were  many  stories  about  bulls  in 
that  grazing  district ;  and  had  not  the  Ashcot  bull  gone 
for  old  Sally  Cripps,  who  had  hardly  a  rag  to  her  back, 
and  torn  "  her  best  dress,"  as  she  averred,  to  the  vicar's 
intense  amusement,  before  she  could  escape  through  a 
gap  ?  At  the  top  corner  of  the  street  dwelt  the  last  of 
the  five  farmers  who  constituted  the  middle  class  of 
the  little  community — old  Master  Turner,  as  he  was 


OUR   VILLAGE.  325 

commonly  called,  who  likewise  kept  a  bull  so  strongly 
suspected  of  vicious  propensities  that  the  ladies  of  the 
parsonage  never  dared  to  take  the  footpath  across  his 
fields.  He  was  a  good  old  soul,  but  I  am  afraid  he  was 
not  very  prosperous,  and  didn't  enjoy  his  cakes  and 
ale  at  Christmas  and  midsummer  as  one  could  wish 
him  to  have  done. 

At  the  Grange,  a  field  or  two  outside  of  the  village, 
lived  Farmer  Wright.  He  was  a  good  farmer,  and  in 
some  respects  a  shrewd,  sensible  man ;  but  he  was 
quite  uneducated,  and  his  way  of  describing  his  own 
age  was  peculiar.  "  Fm  three  years  younger  nor  Sir 
Henry,**  he  would  say  ;  *'  I  allers  was."  Whether  he 
thought  that  the  simple  assertion  contained  in  the 
first  half  of  the  sentence  stood  in  need  of  the  confirma- 
tion afforded  by  the  second  ;  or  whether,  owing  to  his 
inability  to  pursue  any  long  and  difficult  train  of  reason- 
ing, he  had  halted  in  the  persuasion  that  you  might  be 
three  years  younger  than  a  fellow-creature  one  day, 
and  three  years  older  on  another,  I  cannot  say.  But 
such  was  his  invariable  formula.  In  other  ways,  the 
mystery  of  existence  seemed  to  puzzle  him.  He  had 
just  brought  down  a  flock  of  sheep  from  some  neighbour- 
ing pasture  fields  into  the  meadows  by  the  brook  already 
mentioned.  That  night  there  came  a  heavy  rain,  and  in 
the  morning  the  meadows  were  flooded.  I  came  upon 
him  as  he  leaned  on  a  gate  and  looked  over  at  the  flood 
with  a  thoughtful  expression  on  his  broad,  red  face.  He 
told  me  what  had  happened,  without  any  tinge  of  anger 
or  vexation,  but  with  an  air  of  profound  bewilderment. 
"  It  seems  so  hodd,**  he  said.  If  the  event  had  not 
shaken  his  belief  in  the  moral  government  of  the  world, 
it  helped,  I  think,  to  produce  a  confused  and  despon- 


326  TORY   MEMORIES. 

dent  frame  of  mind  in  the  man.  He  finally  solved  the 
riddle  by  hanging  himself  in  the  cow-house,  along  of 
being  cheated  in  the  sale  of  a  calf.  Like  all  our  farmers, 
he  was  a  good  Tory,  and  died  lamented. 

Another  hearty  politician,  who  had  no  doubt  about 
anything,  lived  in  a  snug  farmhouse  at  the  back  of  one 
of  the  yards  already  mentioned.  We  all  knew  him 
too  well  to  make  any  questioning  about  his  principles 
necessary  ;  but  if  questioned,  as  he  was  sometimes  at 
the  farmer's  ordinary  on  Saturday,  he  silenced  curiosity 
by  the  bluff  announcement  that  '*  his  grandfeyther 
wur  blue,  that  his  feyther  wur  blue,  and  that  he  wur 
blue  hisself,  as  also  his  ladders,  carts,  and  waggons." 
This  uncompromising  and  far-reaching  declaration  of 
Tory  principles  was  always  received  with  great  delight 
by  the  majority  of  the  company,  who  expected  it,  and 
if  any  green  individual  who  was  present  attempted  to 
scoff,  he  was  promptly  sat  upon  by  these  excellent  men 
full  of  roast  beef  and  brown  ale.  In  towns  a  man*s 
angles  get  so  soon  rubbed  smooth  that  one  seldom  meets 
with  these  dainty  bits  of  character  except  among  the 
village  folks,  whose  nature  in  those  days  wore  all  its 
original  freshness. 

I  remember  being  driven  home  one  Sunday  evening 
from  a  neighbouring  village  by  a  labourer,  who  was  em- 
ployed for  the  purpose,  the  coachman  being  ill.  As  I  sat 
beside  him  in  the  dogcart,  he  told  me  at  great  length 
of  an  extraordinary  story  which  he  had  just  heard. 
He  had  been  to  church  that  morning,  and  had  heard 
the  story  of  Daniel  in  the  lion*s  den,  which  he  had  never 
heard  before,  and  which  had  made  a  deep  impression 
on  him.  He  repeated  it  to  me  just  as  if  he  had  read  it 
in  the  newspaper,  and  was  retaihng  a  long  report  for  my 


OUR   VILLAGE.  327 

benefit.  *'  Now  this  here  Dannel,  I  suppose/'  were  the 
words  with  which  he  commenced  every  fresh  paragraph, 
so  to  speak,  and  you  would  have  thought  he  was  re- 
counting some  remarkable  and  surprising  circumstance 
which  had  happened  in  the  adjoining  county.  ''  This 
here  Dannel,"  however,  seemed  after  many  repetitions 
to  recall  him  to  a  sense  of  his  own  unworthiness.  He 
allowed  that  he  was  in  the  gall  of  bitterness  and  the 
bond  of  iniquity,  and  finally  declared  his  regret  that 
he  was  constrained  to  dwell  with  Mesech. 

I  remember  that  in  those  days  the  village  children 
would  commonly  call  their  fathers  by  their  Christian 
names.  Our  village  carrier  and  publican,  John  Archer, 
was  always  ''  old  John  "  to  his  sons  and  daughters.  The 
carpenter,  George  Naylor,  was  always  George.  I  re- 
member the  carrier's  eldest  son  saying  to  me  a  day 
or  two  after  the  death  of  his  eldest  sister,  who  kept 
her  father's  house,  **  Ah,  sir,  this  has  been  a  bad  week 
for  John  ;  he's  lost  poor  Loo,  and  now  the  old  mare's 
gone."  John  himself  was  a  great  character  ;  but  his 
sayings  depend  for  their  flavour  on  one's  knowledge  of 
the  man  himself,  without  which  they  would  probably 
fall  flat. 

At  midsummer  came  the  festival  already  mentioned, 
the  village  feast,  which  to  the  unsophisticated  inhabi- 
tants of  that  early  date,  unspoiled  by  travel,  and  ig- 
norant of  anything  better,  was  an  annual  event  of 
great  solemnity  and  importance.  It  began  on  Sunday 
and  lasted  at  that  time  nearly  the  whole  week.  Each 
farmhouse  had  its  httle  house  party.  Every  cottager 
had  his  bit  of  beef  and  his  feast  plum-pudding.  In 
the  streets  were  booths  and  shows,  where  sweets  and 
crackers  were  sold  to  the  children,  and  pig-faced  ladies 


328  TORY   MEMORIES. 

and  other  invaluable  properties  were  exhibited  to  their 
local  elders.  Fights  pre-arranged  between  the  local 
champion  and  the  leading  bruiser  of  any  neighbour- 
ing village  were  usually  brought  off  at  the  feast,  afford- 
ing a  touch  of  nature,  and  a  stimulating  change  after 
a  surfeit  of  beef,  pudding  and  unnatural  curiosities. 

Such,  no  doubt,  had  been  the  village  feast  from 
time  immemorial,  and  the  people  enjoyed  it  with  as 
much  zest  as  they  would  have  done  in  George  II. *s 
reign.  Taking  the  village  communities  as  a  whole,  there 
had,  I  suspect,  been  little  change  in  them  during 
the  intervening  century,  except  in  one  particular. 
Sixty  years  ago  the  farmers  had  ceased  to  take  their 
meals  with  the  labourers,  and  very  few  of  these,  except 
shepherds  and  waggoners,  lodged  under  their  employers* 
roof.  The  men  still  wore  their  smock  frocks,  and  some- 
times came  to  church  in  them ;  but  there  was  one  old 
man  who  always  came  in  a  long,  single-breasted  frock 
coat  of  antique  cut,  made  of  coarse  blue  cloth.  He  was 
past  seventy,  and  this  was  the  coat  he  was  married  in. 

Our  parsonage  had  a  good  reputation  among  female 
servants.  It  was  considered  a  marrying  situation, 
and  sixty  years  ago  five  village  matrons  who  had  been 
either  cook  or  housemaid  at  the  vicarage  were  all 
living  in  Kilby,  within  a  few  doors  of  each  other 
These  were  the  privileged  females  with  whom  the  clergy- 
man's boys  and  girls  always  went  to  tea  at  the  feast — 
not  that  tea  had  anything  to  do  with  it,  feast  plum- 
pudding — that  incomparable  luxury — and  cowslip  wine 
being  the  viands  provided  on  such  occasions.  One  of 
these  matrons,  however,  once  famous  for  her  damson 
cheese,  used  to  place  *'  sloan  wine  '*  upon  the  board, 
which  she  declared  was  "  quite  as  good  as  any  port.'* 


OUR    VILLAGE.  329 

There  were  a  few  outsiders,  like  the  blacksmith,  who 
were  permitted  to  share  in  the  honour  of  entertaining 
us  ;  but  it  was  a  very  exclusive  set,  and  those  admitted 
to  it  had  to  bear  all  the  odium  which  attached  i^to 
"  favouritism  ''  in  every  walk  of  life. 

At  Christmas  the  farmers  showed  their  respect  for 
the  Church  chiefly  through  the  medium  of  pork-pies, 
of  which  the  vicarage  larder  was  always  full  at  this 
agreeable  season ;  coming  fresh  from  the  farmers' 
ovens  they  were  bad  to  beat.  They  neither  are  nor 
were  to  be  bought.  The  best  that  you  can  obtain  from 
the  best  shop  in  London,  which  is  supplied  from  the 
country,  are  but  coarse  imitations  of  the  genuine  article 
made  at  home  and  for  home  consumption.  Old  Mr. 
Dryman  sent  a  couple  of  the  finest  and  fattest  barn- 
door fowls  which  any  epicure  might  wish  to  taste.  They 
always  came  with  his  respectful  duty  to  Madam 
Kebbel :  such  was  the  formula  which  prevailed  in 
Dryman's  boyhood. 

Christmas  was  a  great  time  in  the  country  villages 
of  that  date.  The  village  church  was  always  full  on 
Christmas  Day,  and  well  decorated  with  holly  and  other 
suitable  evergreens.  There  was  no  organ  in  our  church 
at  that  time,  and  the  village  band  occupied  the  front 
seats  of  a  gallery  at  one  end  of  it,  with  the  school 
children  and  cottagers  behind  them.  There  was  a 
fiddle  and  a  bass  fiddle,  a  clarionet  and  a  bassoon,  a 
flute  and  a  trombone,  and  I  verily  believe  a  bugle. 
There  were  no  hymn-books  then,  and  the  psalm  to  be 
sung  was  duly  given  out  by  the  parish  clerk.  The  bass 
voices  usually  remained  sitting  while  the  girls  of  the 
choir  sang  the  higher  parts  ;  but  when  it  did  come  to 
the  men's  turn  there  was  a  rush  and  a  roar  like  twenty 


330  TORY   MEMORIES. 

pheasants  springing  from  the  ground  at  once.  Up 
rose  three  or  four  stalwart  performers  and  thundered 
out  their  allotted  part  with  all  the  power  of  their  lungs, 
much  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  congregation,  who  no 
doubt  would  have  agreed  with  Mr.  Ashcot  that  they 
were  bound  to  this  performance  in  return  for  the  sup- 
port which  they  received,  as  otherwise  they  would  be 
''  eating  their  heads  off.*'  The  louder  they  sang  the 
more  they  showed  their  sense  of  duty. 

We  had  afternoon  instead  of  evening  church  in  those 
days,  and  as  it  was  over  by  4.30,  there  was  time  for 
the  band  to  make  their  round  of  the  farmhouses  in  the 
evening  of  Christmas  Day,  winding  up  with  the  par- 
sonage, where  they  usually  arrived  about  eight.  They 
assembled  in  the  kitchen,  and  we  all  left  the  dining- 
room  to  receive  them.  They  wouldn't  have  liked  it 
had  that  compliment  been  omitted.  Their  united  voices, 
combined  with  all  kinds  of  music,  were  rather  over- 
powering in  that  small  apartment ;  but  we  always 
stayed  out  the  ''  Herald  Angels  ''  and  ''  While  shepherds 
watched  their  flocks  by  night,"  which  was  ^^  Madam's  " 
favourite.  After  that  we  returned  to  our  dessert,  and 
the  singers  sang  what  they  liked  for  the  benefit  of  the 
servants  ;  then  with  the  five  shillings  which  was  the 
regular  donation  they  took  their  departure. 

The  parish  clerk  was  perhaps  one  of  the  most  in- 
teresting figures  who  survived  in  our  village  to  tell 
a  weak-kneed  generation,  who  were  taking  to  trousers, 
what  had  been  the  official  costume  of  their  grandfathers. 
He  was  a  shoemaker  by  trade,  and  that  this  may  have 
added  strength  to  his  convictions  that  it  behoved  him 
to  wear  top-boots,  is  possible  ;  but  I  am  sure  he  was 
animated  by  higher  motives  as  well,  and  that  he  felt 


OUR    VILLAGE.  331 

every  Sunday,  when  he  donned  his  tops,  that  he  was 
honouring  a  great  tradition,  and  that,  somehow  or  other, 
in  his  mind  top-boots  and  the  EstabHshment,  top- 
boots  and  Church  and  State,  top-boots  and  Church  and 
King  were  mysteriously  connected  together  ;  and,  in- 
deed, from  one  point  of  view,  we  might  almost  say  that 
he  was  right.  He  was  as  loyal  and  devout  as  Joshua 
Rann  in  *'  Adam  Bede,''  and  once  when  the  Dissenters 
asked  him  to  tea,  his  indignation  found  vent  in  the  ex- 
clamation that  *'  they  might  just  as  well  have  asked 
Mr.  Kebbel  !" 

But  although  the  clerk  held  aloof  from  the  Dis- 
senters, the  parson  was  not  so  nice,  and  would  probably 
have  accepted  the  invitation,  not  thinking  it  necessary 
to  allow  rehgious  differences  to  interfere  with  his  enjoy- 
ment of  hot  buttered  toast,  tea-cakes,  and  muffins.  He 
regarded  all  his  parishioners  as  equally  under  his  pas- 
toral care,  and  the  Dissenters  never  gave  him  any 
trouble.  Indeed,  the  "  Bishop,'*  who  held  high  office 
in  his  own  sect,  was  ready  to  allow  that  the  vicar  was 
nearly  his  equal  in  clerical  dignity.  He  was  the  lead- 
ing Dissenter  in  the  parish,  dubbed  the  "  Bishop  "  by 
the  peasantry,  who  possessed  considerable  native 
humour.  He  could  drink  a  vast  quantity  of  liquor, 
and  was  accustomed  to  say  that  ''  he  didn't  set  no 
store  by  works.*' 

He  lived  in  the  centre  of  the  village,  which  consisted 
of  one  long  and  nearly  straight  street,  commanded  by 
the  "  turnpike,"  to  which  I  have  already  referred,  with 
small  yards  or  other  secluded  recesses  nestling  in  the 
background,  on  either  side.  One  of  these  was  called 
"the  jetty" — why,  I  could  never  make  out.  It  was 
a  cluster  of  small  cottages,  intersected  by  one  or  two 


332  TORY    MEMORIES. 

narrow  passages  which  you  might  have  Hved  in  the 
village  a  long  time  without  discovering.  It  was  situated 
at  the  top  of  the  town,  and  the  backs  of  the  cottages 
looked  out  upon  the  fields  ;  but  it  was  not  the  fashion- 
able quarter,  though  gentleman  Jarvis  Uved  there, 
who  for  some  reason  or  other  was  supposed  to  know 
something  of  high  life,  a  tradition  which  he  strove  to 
encourage  by  making  his  wife  fetch  the  beer,  and  refus- 
ing to  mingle  with  the  herd.  But  he  was  on  easy  terms 
with  old  widow  Mullet,  who  was  the  owner  of  her  little 
cottage  and  garden  with  the  three  apple  trees  in  front, 
and  '*  lived  upright."  Perhaps  he  saw  in  her  something 
of  the  housekeeper  type.  Her  life  would  have  been 
peaceful  and  happy  had  it  not  been  for  the  village 
idiot — for,  of  course,  we  boasted  one — who  haunted  that 
end  of  the  town,  dressed  in  a  red  coat,  waving  a  big 
whip,  and  indulging  in  loud  halloos  mingled  with 
execrations,  as  though  he  were  hunting  a  pack  of 
hounds  and  cursing  the  foot-people.  Nobody  ever 
interfered  with  him  ;  but  he  frightened  the  poor  old 
lady,  who  gave  it  as  her  opinion  that  folks  who  were 
"  in  that  way  "  should  be  put  in  the  stocks  ;  for  that 
useful  engine  of  restraint  still  existed  in  the  village, 
and  was  very  properly  placed  next  door  to  the  '*  Hawk 
and  Hound,'*  handy  for  the  constable  if  folk  inside 
became  quarrelsome. 

The  constable  in  my  time  was  a  reading  man,  who 
''  couldn't  abide  noevels,*'  and  his  thirst  for  knowledge 
was  such  that,  greatly  to  the  annoyance  of  his  wife,  he 
would  insist  on  using  two  candles  in  pursuit  of  it.  With 
this  intellectual  superiority,  of  which  he  frequently 
boasted,  he  combined  equal  eminence  as  a  workman, 
and  could  hedge  and  ditch,  sink  a  drain — or  ''  suff,'* 


OUR   VILLAGE.  333 

as  it  was  called  in  those  parts — mow,  reap,  or  thresh 
with  any  man  in  the  parish  ;  but  he  occasionally  for- 
got that  the  human  head  was  not  so  hard  as  the  barn 
floor,  and  in  the  discharge  of  his  official  duties,  having 
bestowed  what  he  called  ''  just  a  catch  ''  on  some  gentle- 
man's crown  rather  harder  than  circumstances  war- 
ranted, he  was  compelled  to  lay  down  his  staff. 

Ours  was  not  a  quarrelsome  village,  but  we  had  our 
roughs  among  the  men,  and  our  termagants  among  the 

women. 

Two  such  I  saw  what  time  the  labouring  ox 
With  loosened  traces  from  the  furrow  came. 

It  was  about  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  when  my 
sister  was  going  her  rounds,  and  Nelly  Goreham  stood 
screaming  across  the  street  to  Sukey  Stinger,  on  whom 
she  was  bestowing  a  few  return  compliments  in  exchange 
for  some  just  received  from  Sukey,  whose  invective 
was  powerful.  My  sister  remonstrated  with  Nelly, 
who  wasn't  a  bad-natured  woman,  but  not  one  to  be 
crowed  over  by  a  rival.  *'  Was  yer  to  stand  there  all 
day,"  she  said,  ''  to  have  your  eyes  tored  out  ?  "  On 
another  occasion  my  sister  called  on  her,  without  any 
reference  to  the  above  little  episode,  and  gave  her 
some  good  advice.  "  Yes,  miss,"  she  said ;  ''  what 
you  say  is  all  very  true  and  very  good,  and  I  like  to 
hear  you  talk  and  read ;  but  we  poor  folks — we've  got 
to  scrat  a  living  together  :   we  must  chance  it." 

Peasants  are  usually  credulous  and  superstitious ; 
and  I  remember  once,  when  it  was  prophesied  that  the 
world  was  to  come  to  an  end  at  a  given  date,  on  the 
Saturday  night  before  the  appointed  week  a  labourer 
who  went  for  his  wages  told  the  farmer  that  he  should 
not  come  to  work  on  the  Monday,  as  the  end  was  coming, 


334  TORY    MEMORIES. 

but  that,  ''if  all  went  straight/'  he'd  come  again  the 
week  after. 

One  curious  habit,  evidently  handed  down  from  a 
very  remote  antiquity,  survived  among  the  Midland 
peasantry,  and  probably  in  most  parts  of  England.  I 
mean  the  practice  of  reckoning  time  by  their  meal- 
times. Thus,  if  something  was  to  be  done  or  was  going 
to  happen  between  twelve  and  one  o'clock,  they'd  say 
it  was  ''  agen  dinner  time."  Similarly,  eight  o'clock 
in  the  morning  would  be  '*  agen  breakfast  time."  They 
seldom  or  never  mentioned  the  hour  by  the  clock.  I 
was  often  struck  by  this,  because  we  find  the  same 
thing  in  Homer.  When  the  Greeks  break  the  Trojan 
line  of  battle,  it  is  about  the  time  when  the  woodcutter 
goes  to  his  dinner. 

I  fancy  that  both  stocks  and  constables,  and  pos- 
sibly, though  less  likely,  idiots  as  well,  have  disappeared 
from  the  town  street  in  most  midland  villages.  I  should 
doubt,  also,  whether  *'  Gentleman  Jarvis,"  whose  ac- 
quaintance with  the  aristocracy  was  indicated  in  so 
singular  a  manner,  has  left  any  successors  behind  him. 
Prefixes  derived  from  agricultural  or  other  occupations 
are,  I  suppose,  still  in  use.  We  had  Shepherd  Crook- 
man  and  Carrier  Crookman,  Farmer  Bright  and  Car- 
penter Bright,  Butcher  Steel  and  Baker  Steel,  Tailor 
Shears  and  Gardener  Shears — the  latter  employed  at 
Wistow,  where  there  were  extensive  gardens. 

In  those  days  machinery  was  comparatively  un- 
known. The  grass  was  cut  by  mowers,  sometimes 
three  or  four  in  a  row  swinging  their  scythes  in  numerum, 
as  the  Cyclops  did  their  hammers,  and  was  made  into 
hay  with  the  rake  and  the  pitchfork  busily  plied  by 
the  girls  and  matrons  of  the  village,  who  looked  for- 


OUR   VILLAGE.  335 

ward  to  haymaking  as  a  holiday.  The  wheat  was  cut 
with  the  sickle,  and  the  big  stacks  were  gradually  threshed 
out  with  the  flail  during  the  winter  months,  the  litter 
affording  an  abundant  supply  of  food  to  the  small  birds. 
It  is  not  given  to  us  very  often  nowadays  to  hear  the 
mower  whet  his  scythe,  or  to  listen  to  the  cheerful  thud 
of  the  flail  on  the  oaken  floor  of  the  barn.  Each  farmer 
then  gave  the  harvest-home  supper  to  his  own  labourers 
in  his  own  kitchen,  and  the  vicar,  being  a  bit  of  a  farmer 
himself,  did  the  same  thing,  though  he  did  not  make 
one  of  the  company.  Sometimes  others  were  invited 
besides  those  whom  he  employed  ;  and  a  certain  drunken 
old  soldier  who  had  been  with  Sir  John  Moore  at  Corunna 
was  always  in  great  request,  not  only  on  account  of  his 
public  services,  but  also  for  the  camp  stories  which  he 
had  to  tell,  and  the  good  songs  he  could  sing. 

Sixty  years  ago  the  peasantry  and  stockingers  did 
not  find  village  life  dull,  nor  were  they  badly  off. 
Cottages  in  the  Midland  counties  did  not  have  the 
gardens  attached  to  them  which  one  sees  in  eastern  and 
southern  counties.  But  allotment,  as  we  have  seen,  had 
been  introduced,  and  the  vicar  had  devoted  twelve 
acres  of  his  glebe  to  this  purpose.  The  people  were 
dehghted  with  these  new  field  gardens.  The  produce 
fed  the  pig,  leaving  something  for  themselves,  and  the 
pig  paid  the  rent.  There  was  more  life  in  the  villages 
than  there  is  now ;  the  people  did  not  know  that  they 
were  ignorant,  and  were  not  ashamed.  Since  that 
day  they  have  eaten  of  the  tree  of  knowledge,  and  their 
old  simple  lives  and  simple  pleasures  no  longer  satisfy 
them.  But  such  a  village  as  ours  was  in  the  middle 
of  the  last  century  contained,  upon  the  whole,  a  fairly 
happy  and  contented  population.     Early  in  the  year 


336  TORY    MEMORIES. 

Plough  Monday  brought  its  annual  revel,  when  the  cow- 
horns  were  blown  and  the  mummers  capered  on  the 
parson's  lawn.  At  Whitsuntide  the  village  club  held 
their  annual  function,  walking  solemnly  to  church  in 
the  morning  with  staves  and  banners,  and  dining  at  the 
''  Hawk  and  Hound  ''  afterwards,  with  the  parson  at 
the  head  of  the  table.  Summer  brought  the  Feast, 
when  the  band  played  up  and  down  the  street  nearly  all 
day,  and  got  so  much  beer  from  the  farmers  that  to- 
wards evening  their  harmony  grew  rather  irregular,  and 
if  you  made  any  inquiry  you  would  be  told,  perhaps,  that 
the  trombone  was  ''  merry  "  or  that  the  big  drum  was 
*'  fresh.**  Harvest  and  harvest  home  followed ;  and 
when  that  was  over  it  only  wanted  two  months  to 
Christmas. 

This  was  an  exciting  season  for  the  village  dames, 
who  were  all  members  of  the  Clothing  Club,  and  at 
Christmas  they  came  up  to  the  parsonage  to  choose 
their  clothes.  Their  subscriptions  ranged  from  a  penny 
a  week  up  to  sixpence,  and  at  the  end  of  the  year  there 
was  a  bonus  provided  in  proportion.  The  pence  were 
collected  by  the  clergyman's  wife,  and  at  Christmas 
the  women  all  came  to  invest  their  little  savings  in 
petticoats,  gowns,  blankets,  or  other  such  articles  of 
female  attire  or  domestic  use  as  they  stood  most  in 
need  of.  It  was  an  amusing  sight,  if  a  feeling  somewhat 
deeper  than  amusement  did  not  gradually  creep  in, 
as  you  watched  the  poor  things  tortured  with  anxiety 
how  to  lay  out  their  little  hoard  to  the  best  advantage, 
and  distracted  between  the  rival  attractions  of  prints, 
stuffs,  calicoes,  flannels,  linsey,  wolsey,  and  other 
materials  which,  as  Serjeant  Buzfuz  says,  ''  I  am  not 
in  a  position  to  explain.*'     They  had  to  consider  their 


OUR   VILLAGE.  337 

husband's  tastes  as  well  as  their  own,  and  sometimes 
these  were  as  difficult  to  please  as  a  dandy  of  the 
Regency.  I  heard  of  one  poor  woman  who  bought  a 
piece  of  violet-coloured  stuff  to  make  a  frock  for  her 
little  girl.  Her  husband  made  her  take  it  back  because 
it  ''  warn't  violet,  but  downright  ploom.'*  It  is  im- 
possible to  spell  the  word  so  as  to  give  it  the  exact  Mid- 
land counties  pronunciation.  They  were  very  particular 
about  their  mourning,  as  I  believe  the  poor  are  gener- 
ally, and  would  sometimes  anticipate  the  sad  occasion. 
Fancy  Nan's  mother,  for  instance,  whose  daughter 
was  supposed  to  be  consumptive,  desired  the  draper's 
man  to  "  take  away  them  colours.  I  don't  want  no 
colours,"  she  said,  **  with  my  poor  daughter  like  to  die. 
Bring  me  a  murning  print."  Fancy  Nan,  so  named  by 
the  village  gallants,  was  a  really  pretty,  graceful  girl, 
who  lived  for  many  years  after  the  '*  murning  print  " 
was  bought. 

In  the  early  'forties  the  new  Poor  Law  was  still 
highly  unpopular  with  the  labourers.  The  memory  of 
what  they  enjoyed  under  the  old  one  was  still  fresh ; 
and,  no  doubt,  the  change  did  deprive  the  poor  of  many 
perquisites  to  which  they  had  long  been  accustomed, 
and  which  they  had  come  to  look  on  as  their  rights. 
Into  the  thorny  question  of  indoor  and  outdoor  relief 
I  am  not  about  to  plunge  ;  but  I  really  don't  think  that 
at  the  period  referred  to  the  poor  in  our  own  village, 
whether  peasants  or  artisans,  had  much  to  complain 
of  beyond  the  abolition  of  a  system  which,  however 
immediately  comfortable,  was  undoubtedly  demoralis- 
ing, and,  from  an  economic  point  of  view,  ruinous. 
Persons  well  read  in  the  history  of  the  Poor  Law  will 
know  there  was  a  time  when  the  working  man  in  general, 
w 


338  TORY    MEMORIES. 

to  whatever  order^he  belonged,  had  a  horror  of  "  coming 
on  the  parish/'  The  well-meant,  but  perhaps  not  alto- 
gether wise  legislation  which  was  adopted  during  the 
distress  occasioned  by  the  French  War,  tended  to  impair 
this  wholesome  feehng,  and  by  1834  it  had  almost 
vanished.* 

Between'^the  end  of  the  reign  of  George  II.  and  the 
close  of  the  American  War,  a  great  change  had  taken 
place  in  the  condition  of  the  English  peasantry.  The 
enclosure  of  wastes  and  commons  had  deprived  them 
of  many  advantages  which  went  to  eke  out  their  wages, 
and  prices  having  risen  at  the  same  time,  the  pinch  of 
poverty  began  to  be  more  severely  felt  than  ever  it  had 
been  during  the  whole  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Mr. 
Pitt  proposed  that  industrial  schools  should  be  estab- 
lished in  all  the  villages  of  the  kingdom,  and  that  the 
parish  officers  should  be  empowered  to  levy  the  neces- 
sary rates  ;  and,  what  is  more  to  the  present  purpose, 
that  any  person  entitled  to  receive  parish  relief  might 
take  a  lump  sum  in  advance  to  enable  him  or  her  to  buy 
a  cow  or  a  pig  or  pay  the  rent  of  a  small  plot  of  ground. 
Mr.  Pitt  wished  to  place  parish  relief  on  such  a  footing 
that  the  poor  should  not  be  ashamed  of  receiving  it. 
He  thought  they  had  a  right  to  it,  and  that  there  was 
nothing  humiliating  in  the  acceptance  of  it. 

The  pressure  of  foreign  affairs  prevented  Mr.  Pitt 
from  carrying  out  this  scheme.  But  an  Act  was  passed 
in  1796  which  became  the  parent  of  all  the  abuses  of 
which  the  old  system  was  prolific.  Under  this  Act 
relief  might  be  given  in  aid  of  wages  to  able-bodied 
men,  and  the  parish  authorities  were  at  liberty  to  give 
clothes  and  shoes  if  they  liked.     The  farmers  seem  for 

*  The  next  two  pages  are  in  part  adapted  from  my  "  Agricultural  Labourer.'* 


OUR    VILLAGE.  339 

a  long  time  to  have  found  this  cheaper  than  paying 
higher  wages  ;  but  the  system  became  intolerable  at 
last,  and  then  reformers  rushed  into  the  opposite 
extreme  and  destroyed  the  old  parochial  system  alto- 
gether. It  would  have  been  quite  enough  to  repeal 
the  Act  of  1796,  which,  besides  its  practical  anomalies, 
did  certainly  tend  to  undermine  the  self-respect  of  the 
peasantry  ;  but  the  wholesale  destruction  of  a  system 
which  had  lasted  for  three  hundred  years,  threatening, 
as  it  did,  the  entire  withdrawal  of  outdoor  reUef ,  inspired 
the  bitterest  hatred  among  the  agricultural  poor  ;  and 
I  remember  that  ten  years  after  the  Act  of  1834  was 
passed  the  new  Union  workhouses  were  never  spoken 
of  by  the  labourers  but  with  expressions  of  the  strongest 
indignation.  They  were  called  ''  bastyles,"  a  term  which 
I  hardly  understood  then,  but  which  conveyed  to  my 
childish  mind  an  impression  of  cruel  hardships  and 
privations  endured  by  an  unoffending  class  among 
whom  I  counted  many  friends.  I  can  just  recollect 
one  of  the  old  parish  workhouses,  then  in  ruins,  which 
stood  by  the  side  of  the  road  about  two  miles  from  our 
house.  It  was  a  small  building  with  some  garden 
ground  attached  to  it,  and  could  not  have  been  capable 
of  accommodating  many  inmates. 

Statesmen  like  Mr.  Pitt  and  Mr.  Canning  could  take 
broader  views  of  these  questions  than  are  taken  by  the 
professors  of  a  rigid  political  economy.  Mr.  Canning, 
for  instance,  used  to  say  that  the  old  system  was  not 
one  to  be  abolished  with  a  light  heart,  and  he  attri- 
buted the  general  loyalty  of  the  people  during  many 
trying  periods  to  the  existence  of  the  old  Poor  Law, 
which  gave  them  a  hold  upon  the  land,  and  attached 
them  to  the  gentry.     The  Act  of  1834,  there  is  good 


340  TORY    MEMORIES. 

reason  to  believe,  went  beyond  the  necessities  of  the 
case.  When  outdoor  rehef  was  granted  on  a  magis- 
trate's order,  it  created  a  close  and  intimate  connection 
between  the  landed  proprietors  and  the  poor,  such  as 
had  existed  for  centuries.  But  one  good  effect  the 
new  system  undoubtedly  had.  It  revived  the  old 
aversion  to  parish  relief  which  the  Act  of  1796  had 
gradually  worn  away.  On  the  other  hand,  it  made  a 
change  in  the  relations  between  the  peasantry,  the 
clergy,  and  the  gentry,  which,  though  only  a  necessary 
part  of  the  much  wider  change  in  our  whole  parochial 
system  effected  by  Earl  Grey's  Act,  was  not  an  un- 
mixed good.  But  at  the  time  of  which  I  am  writing, 
there  was  little  evidence  on  the  surface  of  any  such 
change  of  feeling.  Village  life  in  the  Midlands  down 
to  sixty  years  ago,  and  later,  was  much  what  it  was 
sixty  years  before  that  as  described  by  Cobbett  and 
sixty  years  before  Cobbett  as  described  by  Lord  Stan- 
hope. In  the  second  half  of  the  nineteenth  century 
the  change  began  ;  but  it  proceeded  very  slowly  till 
the  agricultural  depression  of  1875  set  in  and  an  agri- 
cultural agitation  commenced  which  put  an  end  for 
ever  to  the  rural  England  which  I  have  known,  and 
which  the  two  above-named  writers  have  described. 

Yet  the  change,  after  all,  was  only  accentuated  by 
that  great  calamity.  It  must  have  come  ;  and  I  often, 
in  thinking  of  it,  remember  what  Sir  Walter  Scott  says 
in  the  concluding  chapter  of  *'  Waverley "  as  to  the 
change  which  had  come  over  Scotland  during  the  sixty 
years  that  passed  between  1755  and  1805.  That 
change,  which  he  describes  in  detail,  had,  he  says, 
*'  made  the  present  people  of  Scotland  a  class  of  beings 
as   different   from   their   grandfathers   as   the   existing 


OUR    VILLAGE.  341 

English  are  from  those  of  Queen  EHzabeth's  time/'  It 
would  be  exaggeration  to  say  as  much  as  this  of  the 
change  which  has  passed  over  the  English  village  in 
the  same  period  of  time  ;  but  something  very  like  it 
may  be  said  without  exceeding  the  truth.  As  I  am  able 
to  remember,  if  imperfectly,  the  old  system  as  it  was 
before  any  signs  of  dissolution  had  shown  themselves, 
and  as  I  believe  it  to  have  existed  when  Cobbett  fol- 
lowed the  plough  and  Gray  wrote  the  ''  Elegy,"  I  have 
taken  a  pleasure  in  recording  these  few  reminiscences 
of  rural  scenes  and  habits  of  which,  in  a  few  years, 
there  will  be  no  surviving  witnesses. 

I  try  to  hope  that  the  present  is  only  a  transition 
period  in  the  history  of  EngHsh  village  Hfe,  and  that  a 
future  may  be  in  store  for  it  which  will  bring  back  the 
peasantry  to  their  old  homes. 

But  it  will  not  bring  back  the  village  Hfe  of  my 
childhood  which  I  have  here  feebly  endeavoured  to 
describe,  with  its  simple  pleasures,  its  picturesque  in- 
dustries, and  its  original  humours.  These  are  gone ; 
the  scythe  and  the  flail,  the  stocking  frame,  the  trom- 
bone and  the  bassoon  are  silenced.  But  many  memo- 
ries linger  round  them,  and  these  it  has  been  a  pleasure 
to  recall. 


CHAPTER    XXII. 

RETROSPECT. 

Childhood  and  Old  Age — Effect  of  the  Reform  Act  of  1832  on  the  Tory 
Party — Of  the  Oxford  Revival — Of  the  Young  England  Movement — 
Protection — The  Present  Economic  Reaction — The  Future — Present 
Position  of  the  Church  of  England — Decline  of  the  House  of 
Commons — A  Last  Word. 

In  looking  back  over  the  period  which  these  reminis- 
cences embrace,  I  am  sometimes  reminded  of  what 
has  been  said  concerning  a  future  state — namely,  that 
perhaps  our  life  in  this  world  may  then  present  itself 
to  our  minds  with  only  the  same  degree  of  remoteness 
and  unreality  as  our  childhood  presents  to  our  old  age. 
It  is  difficult  to  realise  the  life  we  led  as  children,  and 
still  more  to  recall  the  thoughts,  hopes,  and  fears  of 
fifty  years  ago.  If  we  look  into  the  far  past  we  can 
discern  little  figures  which  we  know  to  be  ourselves 
moving  about  on  ground  famihar  to  us  ;  but  what  we 
were  doing  then,  what  we  enjoyed,  in  what  we  were 
vexed,  what  we  looked  forward  to,  we  can  only  very 
imperfectly  comprehend.  Of  course,  certain  events  will 
have  taken  place  in  the  childhood  of  most  men  which 
stand  out  so  far  above  the  rest  that  they  can  never  be 
forgotten,  nor  can  the  lapse  of  years  either  blunt  or 
obliterate  the  impressions  which  they  first  produced  on 
us.  But  these  are  few  and  far  between.  I  am  speak- 
ing of  the  ordinary  daily  life  of  which  the  even  tenor 

342 


RETROSPECT.  343 

boasts  no  such  landmarks,  and  which  we  look  back 
upon  across  the  intervening  years  much  as  we  discern 
the  dim  outline  of  some  distant  shore  across  an  arm  of 
the  sea. 

It  may  be  that  this  life  will  present  itself  to  us 
in  another  world  under  very  similar  conditions.  I  be- 
lieve the  thought  is  to  be  found  in  Butler's  ''  Analogy/' 
and  it  suggests,  as  I  have  said,  a  parallel  comparison 
between  two  periods  of  political  and  intellectual 
activity  widely  distant  from  each  other.  We  can- 
not even  for  a  moment  throw  ourselves  back  into  our 
former  selves  ;  or  realise,  except  in  the  minutest  degree, 
what  it  is  to  be  a  child.  These  reminiscences  extend, 
roughly  speaking,  over  sixty  years  ;  and  if  I  look  a 
little  further  back  and  include  what  I  heard  from 
others  of  the  period  immediately  preceding  it,  I  find 
myself  looking  through  a  kind  of  haze,  and  have  great 
difficulty  in  realising  to  myself  how  men  thought  and 
felt  before  the  nation  was  roused  from  the  moral  repose 
which  it  had  enjoyed  for  near  a  century  and  a  half. 
That  repose  had  not  been  materially  disturbed  even 
by  the  French  Revolution.  It  was  dispelled,  never  to 
return,  by  the  storms  which  followed  the  death  of  Mr. 
Canning. 

Before  quitting  the  tangled  skein  of  memories  with 
which  we  have  hitherto  been  engaged,  a  few  final 
words  may  not  be  out  of  place  tracing  the  separate 
effects  upon  Toryism  of  the  several  great  movements, 
political,  religious,  social,  and  literary,  by  which  the 
nineteenth  century  has  been  distinguished.  Before  the 
French  Revolution,  Toryism  was  not  regarded  as  a 
purely  defensive  organisation.  Before  1793  the  institu- 
tions of  the  country  were  not  threatened.     The  Whigs 


344  TORY   MEMORIES. 

were  just  as  good  Conservatives  as  the  Tories,  and  they 
had  reason  to  be.  When  they  quitted  this  position,  and, 
following  the  lead  of  Mr.  Fox,  joined  hands  with  the 
Jacobins,  the  Tories  were  compelled  to  change  their 
ground,  too.  As  the  Whigs  became  destructives,  the 
Tories  became  Conservatives.  The  thing  was  inevit- 
able :  they  came  to  regard  the  whole  fabric  of  the 
Constitution  and  the  security  of  the  existing  social  order 
as  specially  entrusted  to  themselves.  The  Revolution 
of  1828-32  did  not  destroy  their  raison  d'etre^  for  there 
was  plenty  left  to  defend  ;  but  it  unhinged  and  de- 
moralised the  party.  The  mortification  of  defeat,  the 
consciousness  that  they  had  proved  unequal  to  the  task 
of  defending  the  position  which  they  had  fondly 
believed  to  be  impregnable,  paralysed  their  energies  ; 
and  when  they  were  shown  a  way  by  which  they  might 
not  only  recover  their  lost  prestige,  but  regain  a  posi- 
tion far  stronger  and  more  popular  than  the  one  they 
had  lost,  they  had  not  the  heart  to  follow  it.  Such 
was  the  effect  of  the  Reform  Bill  on  the  Toryism  of 
that  era. 

What,  then,  was  the  effect  of  the  great  religious 
movement  which  was  taking  place  simultaneously  ? 
Just  the  reverse  of  what  it  ought  to  have  been.  In- 
stead of  acting  as  a  concentrating  and  consolidating 
force,  and  giving  the  Tory  party  another  great  cause 
to  fight  for,  the  cause  which  had  once  been  their  own, 
**  that  ancient  rehgion,''  as  Newman  called  it,  which 
had  not  yet  entirely  died  out  :  instead  of  this,  the 
Oxford  Revival  had  exactly  the  opposite  effect.  It 
operated  as  a  disintegrating  force,  and  has  continued 
to  be  an  element  of  weakness  in  the  Tory  party  from 
that  day  to  this.     This  has  not  been  sufficiently  ob- 


RETROSPECT.  345 

served.  Mr.  Gladstone  would  have  rallied  the  part}^ 
under  that  banner  ;  but  they  would  not.  He  declared 
that  he  himself,  soon  after  the  publication  of  his  "  Church 
and  State/'  ''  found  himself  the  last  man  upon  the 
sinking  ship.*'  This  was  not  quite  true.  Mr.  Glad- 
stone, hke  Newman,  was  impatient,  and  had  he  stuck 
to  his  first  principles,  he  might  still  have  been  sur- 
cessful.  As  it  was,  there  was  a  cry  against  Puseyism, 
and  though  the  Tory  party  were  only  very  partially 
imbued  with  what  went  by  that  name,  it  divided  them 
into  two  sections  suspicious  of  each  other,  and  dis- 
abled them  from  acting  together  with  that  perfect 
unanimity  which  the  situation  demanded.  Such  was 
undoubtedly  the  effect  of  the  Oxford  Revival  on  the 
Tory  party  after  1832. 

Had  the  kindred  movement,  the  Young  England  / 
movement,  any  better  success  ?  Here  again  the  Tory 
party  threw  away  a  chance  which  in  their  better  days 
they  might  eagerly  have  embraced,  but  which,  in  their 
then  disheartened  and  sceptical  frame  of  mind,  was  too 
heavy  a  task  for  them  ;  for  be  it  remembered  that  the 
whole  Revolution  completed  within  the  four  years 
already  named,  1828-32,  and  quite  as  important  as 
the  Revolution  of  1688,  had  the  effect  which  all  revolu- 
tions have,  and  which  Thucydides  has  so  forcibly 
described.  They  breed  a  spirit  of  scepticism,  distrust, 
and  indifference  to  great  principles.  The  Tory  party 
had  lost  the  firm  footing  which  the  old  Constitution 
gave  them  ;  and  when  a  new  field  of  action  was  set 
before  them  they  had  lost  faith  in  themselves,  and  re- 
coiled from  the  necessary  effort.  ''It  is  clear  from 
*  Sybil,'  "  says  Mr.  Froude,  ''  that  there  had  been  a 
time  when  he  (Lord  Beaconsfield)  could  have  taken  up 


N 


346  TORY    MEMORIES. 

as  a  statesman  with  all  his  heart  the  cause  of  labour, 
and  if  the  younger  generation  to  whom  he  appealed 
would  have  gone  with  him,  he  might  have  led  a  nobler 
crusade  than  Coeur  de  Lion/'  But  they  would  not. 
The  two  greatest  statesmen  of  the  party  appealed  to 
them  in  vain.  The  shock  of  the  Revolution  had  been 
too  fresh  to  allow  of  their  bracing  up  their  energies 
again  for  so  great  an  effort  as  was  required  of  them. 
The  principle  of  faith  had  been  crushed  in  them,  and 
though  Mr.  Disraeli's  theories  did  not  divide  the  party 
as  the  Tractarian  movement  did,  the  effect  was  to  breed 
in  them  distrust  of  the  only  leader  who  was  possible  for 
them  in  the  House  of  Commons,  and  to  weaken  their 
Parliamentary  action  on  more  than  one  well-known 
occasion. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Tory  party  has  been  deeply 
and  permanently  affected  by  the  great  literary  move- 
ment which  began  with  the  Lake  School,  and  which, 
though  Liberal  in  its  origin,  found  its  truest  representa- 
tive in  the  genius  of  Sir  Walter  Scott.  In  Scott  and 
Carlyle  Toryism  has  had  the  unspeakable  privilege  of 
having  on  its  side  the  two  writers  who,  it  will  be  gener- 
ally allowed,  have  influenced  the  political  thought  of 
Great  Britain  more  than  any  two  that  could  be  named 
alongside  of  them.  Macaulay,  it  is  said,  decHned  to 
write  an  article  on  Scott  because  he  had  done  so  much 
harm  that  he  could  not  write  of  him  in  a  friendly  spirit, 
and  did  not  wish  to  attack  him.  The  harm  was  the 
good.  When  we  think  of  all  that  the  *'  old  Scotch 
Tory/'  as  Scott  called  himself,  has  done  for  us,  we  need 
not  wonder  at  Macaulay's  aversion  to  him. 

As  far  as  the  greatness  of  any  writer  is  to  be  measured 
by  the  effect  which  he  produces  on  his  own  age,  ScottUn 


RETROSPECT.  347 

modern  times  has  had  but  one  equal,  if  indeed  he  has 
had  that — namely,  Carlyle.  The  influence  of  the 
Waverley  novels  operated  in  two  different  directions. 
It  contributed  powerfully  to  the  growth  of  that  younger 
Toryism  from  whose  loins  sprang  the  powerful  and 
popular  Conservative  party  of  the  present  day,  and 
it  prepared  the  soil  for  the  reception  of  that  Anglo- 
Catholic  revival  which,  with  all  its  errors,  has  been 
the  salvation  of  the  English  Church.  When  we 
consider  the  magnitude  of  the  issues  at  stake,  the  in- 
terests, both  temporal  and  spiritual,  in  defence  of  which 
these  two  forces  are  combined ;  when  we  think  of  the 
influence  to  be  exercised  on  future  generations  by  the 
victory,  or  the  defeat,  of  either  in  the  struggle  which  is 
imminent ;  when  we  think  of  all  that  Scott  may  have  been 
instrumental  in  saving  for  us,  and,  if  the  evil  days  must 
come  at  last,  the  long  respite  he  has  gained  for  us  ; 
when  we  look  back  on  the  sixty  years'  war,  and  note 
the  varying  fortunes  of  the  fight,  the  advance,  the 
retreat,  the  surging  assault,  the  obstinate  defence ; 
and  reflect  how  much  the  cause  of  faith  and  loyalty  and 
order  has  owed  to  the  genius  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  those 
who  still  fight  under  this  ancient  banner  may  perhaps 
sympathise  with  one  who  can  boast  that  from  child- 
hood he  has  sat  at  Sir  Walter  Scott's  feet.* 

At  the  unveiling  of  the  bust  of  Sir  Walter  Scott 
by  the  Duke  of  Buccleuch  in  Westminster  Abbey,  of 
which  I  have  spoken  in  an  earlier  chapter,  a  striking 
testimony  to  the  admiration  with  which  that  great  writer 
was  regarded  in  America  was  afforded  by  Mr.  Hay, 
the  American  Ambassador.  The  American  mind,  he 
said,  was  peculiarly  sensitive  to  the  romance  of  courts 

*  See  Quarterly  Review,  April,  1895. 


348  TORY    MEMORIES. 

and  princes  ;  and  in  the  Far  West,  in  the  forests  and 
the  prairies,  the  Waverleys  were  as  warmly  appreciated 
as  in  Washington  and  Boston.  His  father,  he  added, 
had  often  told  him  he  remembered  when  young  men 
would  ride  thirty  or  forty  miles  to  the  nearest  town  to 
know  when  the  next  Waverley  would  be  published. 

On  the  same  occasion  an  interesting  speech  was 
made  by  Mr.  A.  J.  Balfour,  calling  special  attention  to 
Scott's  influence  and  popularity  on  the  Continent,  to 
which  the  only  two  Enghsh  writers  who  could  be  said 
to  make  any  approach  were  Richardson  and  Byron. 
To  what  was  this  due  ?  In  large  part  to  the  fact  that 
Scott's  great  merit  did  not  lie  in  style  or  niceties  of 
style,  which  many  men  do  not  always  understand. 
He  relied  on  *'  broad  effects  and  serious  issues,"  which 
all  could  appreciate.  Scott  had  the  benefit  of  one 
great  secret  of  success  to  which  most  great  men  have 
been  indebted,  ''  the  coincidence  of  special  and  ex- 
ceptional gifts  with  special  and  exceptional  opportu- 
nities.'' The  reaction  against  the  eighteenth  century 
was,  said  Mr.  Balfour,  Scott's  opportunity,  and  he  was 
ready  for  it  when  it  came.  He  took  it  at  the  flood. 
The  reaction  was  towards  romance,  the  romance  of 
the  past,  of  feudalism,  chivalry,  and  Catholicism,  and 
Scott  reclothed  the  dry  bones  and  made  them 
living  reahties,  and  his  characters  Hving  representatives 
of  them. 

In  Scott's  Journal  of  July  13th,  1827,  we  read,  *'  Two 
agreeable  persons,  the  Revd.  Mr.  Gilly,  one  of  the  Preben- 
daries of  Durham,  with  his  wife,  a  pretty  little  woman, 
dined  with  us."  I  met  the  ''  pretty  little  woman,"  at 
Measden  in  Hertfordshire,  where  she  was  staying  with  our 
friends,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Rudge,  Mr.  Rudge  being  rector  of 


RETROSPECT.  349 

the  parish — the  same  house  at  which  I  was  staying  when 
invited  to  shoot  with  Lord  Strathnairn.  Mrs.  Gilly 
w^as  then  a  charming  old  lady  between  sixty  and  seventy 
years  of  age.  She  had  married  Dr.  Gilly,  who  was 
much  older  than  herself,  at  the  age  of  seventeen,  and 
she  used  to  tell  us  of  Sir  Walter  Scott's  surprise  when 
she  and  her  husband  drove  to  Abbotsford,  and  Scott, 
as  was  his  wont,  came  up  the  gravel  walk  to  meet  them. 
'*  Why,  she's  quite  a  young  thing !  "  he  exclaimed. 
She  described  him  as  very  lame,  and  apparently  a  short 
man,  which  he  certainly  was  not,  but  he  was  much 
bent  at  that  time  and  would  look  so,  no  doubt,  as  he 
hobbled  up  with  his  stick  to  the  door  of  the  carriage. 
She  was,  of  course,  delighted  with  him,  but  hardly 
more  than  we  were  at  hearing  her  talk  of  him. 

I  remember  well,  too,  my  own  first  introduction  to 
the  Waverleys,  and  how  as  children  we  used  to  discuss 
them  with  our  playfellows,  the  young  Halfords.  What 
desperate  young  Tories  and  Jacobites  we  all  were ! 
How  we  stood  by  Claverhouse  and  Rob  Roy,  and 
Peveril  of  the  Peak,  and  Fergus  MTvor,  and  Red- 
gauntlet  and  Ravenswood,  and  Queen  Mary !  We 
were  too  young,  I  think,  to  appreciate  the  exquisite 
humour  of  such  characters  as  the  Antiquary,  Brad- 
wardine,  and  Nicol  Jarvie.  And  neither  the  first  nor 
the  last  of  these  three  was  a  Tory.  The  heroic  was 
what  appealed  to  us,  as  it  does  to  all  young  minds. 
And  I  have  Httle  doubt  that  from  reading  the  Waver- 
leys continually,  as  I  did  between  the  ages  of  ten  and 
twelve,  my  mind  received  a  bias  which  determined  my 
future  principles.  In  Mrs.  Gilly  I  found  one  who  had 
actually  come  in  contact  with  the  magician,  and  to 
touch  the  hand  which  had  once  touched  his  seemed  to 


350  TORY    MEMORIES. 

me,  even  at  the  sober  age  of  forty-five,  to  be  a  great 
privilege. 

Opinions  may  differ  about  the  hterary  merits  of  the 
Waverleys.  Of  their  poHtical  influence  there  can  hardly 
be  two  opinions.  As  much  may  be  said  of  Carlyle's 
writings.  The  poetry  of  Toryism  in  Scott,  and  the 
strength  of  Toryism  in  Carlyle,  have,  the  two  together, 
shown  how  powerfully  that  creed  appeals  to  both  the 
imagination  and  the  reason,  without  the  aid  of  which  no 
political  system  can  ever  be  either  permanent  or  popular. 

Such  has  been  the  effect  of  the  literary  movement 
of  the  last  century.  I  am  now,  however,  approaching 
delicate  ground,  and  the  probable  influence  on  the  Tory 
party  of  the  economic  reaction  to  which  the  twentieth 
century  has  given  birth  I  shall  not  venture  to  discuss.  It 
may  be  disastrous.  It  may,  on  the  contrary,  tend  to  the 
re-connection  of  broken  ties,  the  rupture  of  which  is  the 
worst  misfortune  which  has  ever  befallen  Toryism. 
My  own  idea  is  that  the  Tory  party  now  should  give 
their  adversaries  rope  enough.  If  we  try  to  compete 
with  them  in  what  is  called  a  constructive  policy,  they 
can  always  go  one  better,  for  they  don't  care  how  far 
they  go,  and  Tories  do.  Let  the  Tories  be  true  to  their 
great  trust,  true  to  their  great  chief,  and  exorcise 
that  evil  spirit  which  makes  a  party  turn  upon  its  leaders 
as  soon  as  fortune  goes  against  it — a  fault,  I  am  sorry 
to  say,  which  has  been  only  too  conspicuous  in  the 
history  of  the  Tory  party — and  their  turn  will  come 
round  again,  sooner,  perhaps,  than  they  think  for.  If 
they  choose  ''  to  throw  a  pearl  away  richer  than  all 
their  tribe,*'  they  will  wander  many  years  in  the  wilder- 
ness before  they  have  atoned  for  their  error. 

Such  memories  as   I   have  recorded  relating  to  the 


RETROSPECT.  35i 

Church  of  England  naturally  suggest  the  question 
whether  the  changes  we  have  noticed  have  left  her 
stronger  or  weaker  than  she  was  before.  What  she 
may  have  lost  in  one  way  she  has  gained  in  another  ; 
but  to  balance  the  loss  and  the  gain  would  lead  me  too 
far  afield,  and  would  be  tantamount  to  a  set  essay  on 
the  Church.  I  have  no  doubt  that  over  large  masses 
of  the  population  she  has  greatly  strengthened  her  hold. 
The  real  energy  and  self-devotion  which  distinguish  the 
clergy  at  the  present  day  are  probably  more  fully  ap- 
preciated in  the  towns  than  in  the  country,  while  the 
bonhomie,  the  rural  tastes  and  the  social  sympathies 
displayed  in  such  an  eminent  degree  by  an  older  genera- 
tion of  rectors  and  vicars  are,  perhaps,  not  equally 
visible  in  their  successors,  who  may  possibly  have  lost 
ground  in  the  rural  districts,  where  these  qualities  are 
specially  valued.  I  do  not  say  that  they  have,  but 
if  they  have,  the  rural  loss  is  less,  I  should  think,  than 
the  urban  gain.  Moreover,  the  high  ceremonial,  the 
music,  and  all  that  makes  for  beauty  in  the  Anglican 
service  appeal  to  a  class  of  minds  more  likely  to  be  met 
with  among  the  artisans  than  among  the  peasantry, 
with  whom  at  first  these  changes  were  far  from  popular. 
On  the  whole,  though  I  cannot  offer  any  decided 
opinion  either  one  way  or  the  other,  I  should 
say  that  the  Church  as  an  institution  is  neither 
weaker  nor  stronger  than  it  was  at  the  accession  of 
Queen  Victoria;  but  that  her  character  in  the  esti- 
mation of  the  more  educated  and  intelligent  classes 
has  appreciably  risen.  I  have  always  been  of  opinion, 
and  am  still,  that  one  great  source  of  strength 
pecuhar  to  the  Church  of  England  is  the  social  posi- 
tion   of   the    clergy.     They  are,  as   a   rule,  gentlemen  ; 


352  TORY    MEMORIES. 

and  let  certain  persons  say  what  they  will,  the  working 
classes  like  gentlemen,  and  like  to  be  addressed  by 
them.  If  ever  anything  should  occur  to  deprive  the 
Church  of  the  special  advantage  which  she  thus  en- 
joys, or  greatly  to  diminish  its  extent,  the  truth  of 
what  I  say  would,  I  think,  very  speedily  be  recognised. 

Let  me  not  be  misunderstood,  I  am  speaking  of  the 
Church  of  England  as  she  is :  a  great  national  insti- 
tution representing  a  great  deal  more  than  the  body  of 
doctrine  handed  down  to  her  from  the  Apostolic 
ages.  She  is  part  of  a  great  social  system,  a  great 
constitutional  organisation,  as  well.  And,  regarding  her 
all  round  from  both  these  points  of  view,  what  I  assert 
of  her  is  true.  It  would  not  be  true  of  religious  insti- 
tutions concerned  with  religion  alone.  Their  strength 
is  derived  from  a  different  source,  and  may  in  some 
circumstances,  as  Dr.  Johnson  himself  admitted,  be  more 
effective  than  that  of  the  Established  Church.  Mr. 
Disraeli's  speeches  at  Aylesbury  (November  14,  1861) 
and  at  High  Wycombe  in  October,  1862,  are  a  masterly 
exposition  of  the  theory  thus  briefly  indicated. 

To  pass  from  the  Church  to  the  State  :  the  differ- 
ence between  the  House  of  Commons  as  it  is  now  and 
as  it  was  sixty  years  ago  is  too  generally  recognised  to 
require  much  notice  from  myself.  That  the  House  has 
risen  in  national  estimation  since  the  legislation  of 
1832  scarcely  anyone  pretends  to  say  who  has  any 
knowledge  of  the  subject.  Mr.  Gladstone  himself  was 
one  of  the  first  to  recognise  its  decline.  The  same 
prestige  no  longer  attaches  to  the  position  of  a  member, 
which  is  at  once  more  irksome  and  less  dignified  than 
it  used  to  be,  the  natural  consequence  being  that  the 
same  class  of  men  no  longer  care  so  much  for  a  seat  in 


RETROSPECT.  353 

it.  The  gravity  of  this  change  may  not  be  apparent 
to  the  Labour  Party  and  the  Sociahsts,  who  hope  to 
find  their  account  in  it ;  but  to  all  thinking  men  who 
have  no  object  of  their  own  to  gain  by  the  deteriora- 
tion of  Parliament,  it  has  long  been  a  source  of  great 
anxiety. 

These  "  Memories  "  have  been  my  companions  now 
for  nearly  twelve  months,  and  if  anyone  in  reading 
them  experiences  a  tenth  part  of  the  pleasure  that  I 
have  taken  in  recording  them  I  shall  hold  myself  ex- 
tremely fortunate.  Mr.  Disraeli  has  said  in  one  of  his 
novels  that  there  is  nothing  so  sad  to  look  back  upon 
as  a  youth  that  has  not  been  enjoyed.  I  cannot  say 
that  of  my  own  youth ;  and  in  a  great  part  of  these 
reminiscences  I  have  been  enjoying  it  over  again.  But 
what  is  endeared  to  one's  self  by  a  thousand  associations 
cannot  awaken  the  same  feelings  in  others,  and  the 
record  must  depend  for  its  popularity  solely  on  the 
degree  of  interest  or  amusement  which  the  subject 
matter  is  of  itself  calculated  to  afford.  I  have  not 
taken  Toryism  too  seriously.  I  have  tried  to  avoid  as 
much  as  possible  controversial  questions  and  party 
politics ;  but  I  did  not  feel  called  upon  to  exclude 
them  altogether,  or  to  refrain  from  the  expression  of 
my  own  opinions  where  it  seemed  natural  to  intro- 
duce them. 

I  have  written  as  a  Tory,  and  spoken  freely  of  such 
as  are  hostile  to  the  political  faith  in  which  I  was  brought 
up  ;  but  in  alluding  to  party  tactics  and  parliamentary 
manoeuvres  I  have  always  meant  to  make  it  plain  that 
I  regarded  them  as  the  legitimate  instruments  of  party 
warfare,  and  that  at  all  events  I  did  not  consider  these 

X 


354  TORY    MEMORIES. 

pages  suitable  for  the  discussion  of  political  morality. 
Where  I  have  condemned  measures,  I  have  not,  that 
I  am  aware  of,  traduced  motives,  or  suggested  that 
every  attack  upon  principles  which  I  hold  to  be  sacred 
must  necessarily  be  dishonest. 

On  closing  the  series,  and  looking  back  across  the 
long  years  through  which  it  has  travelled,  I  trust  I 
am  not  mistaken  in  believing  that  I  have  said  nothing 
which  can  be  thought  injurious  either  to  the  feelings 
of  the  living  or  the  memory  of  the  dead.  Of  the  various 
scenes  and  incidents  herein  depicted,  I  have  always 
endeavoured  to  make  the  humorous  aspect  the  pre- 
dominant feature  ;  and  if  in  the  long  train  of  anecdotes, 
jocose,  sarcastic,  or  grotesque,  which  necessarily  occu- 
pies a  large  portion  of  the  book,  I  have  left  anything 
of  a  nature  to  annoy  or  to  misrepresent  a  single  indi- 
vidual, either  public  or  private,  I  hope,  whoever  he 
may  be,  that  he  will  accept  the  apology  thus  tendered 
beforehand  for  what,  if  inconsiderate,  was  certainly 
unintentional.  Toryism,  like  Liberalism,  is  only  one 
form  of  giving  expression  to  a  sentiment  which  affects 
all  our  views  of  life  and  human  nature  in  general,  as 
well  as  of  politics  in  particular;  and  many  things 
appeal  to  itthat  are  not  necessarily  connected  with 
the  creed  which  bears  its  name. 


INDEX. 


"Adullamites,  The,"  121— 131 
"Agricultural   Labourer,    The,"   by 

T.  E.  Kebbel,  289  note 
Agriculturists,  Tory,   288—298 
Allotment  system,  288—296 
Arcadia,  Tory,   149 — 170 
Aristocracy,   and   the  power  of  the 

Crown,  43 
Aristotle,  53 

Artisan  class.  The,  257,  258 
Austin,  Mr.  Alfred,  Poet-Laureate, 

i39j  231 
Austen,  Jane,  323 


B. 


Baden-Powell,  Sir  George,  118,  119 

Baker,  Johnny,  191 

Balfour,  Right  Hon.  A.  J.,  loi,  120, 

147,  242,  348,  350 
Balfour  of  Burleigh,   Lord,    i,   97, 

120,  212 
Beaconsfield,     Lord     {see    Disraeli, 

Benjamin) 
Beauchamp,  Lord  (Mr.  Lygon),  31, 

37,  92 
Berlin  Congress,  55 
Black  Sea  Conference,    The,    1871, 

46 
Blackwood,  Mr.  William,  253 
Blackwood's  Magazine,  248 
Bohemia,  Tory,  171 — 192 
Bolingbroke,  Lord,  9,  11,  36 
Brabourne,  Lord,  100 
Bradlaugh,  Charles,  139 
Brandt,  William,  201,  202,  203,  208 


Bright,  John,   15,   122,   125 
Brocket  of  St.  Dunstan's,  311 — 312 
Brodrick,  Right  Hon,  W.  St.  John, 

96 
Brodrick,  Mrs.  St.  John,  147 
Brough,  Robert,  173 
Bucknill,  Mr.,  281 
Burghclere,  Lady,  147 
Burke,  Edmund,  160 
Butler's  "Analogy,"  343 
Byron,   Lord,   as  interpreter  of  the 

Lake  School,  147 


Cambridge,  Duke  of  (father  of  the 

Commander-in-Chief),  152 
Canada  Corn  Bill,  90 
Canning,  George,  3,   122,  304,  339, 

343 
Canning  Club,  The,  210 
Caftain,  The,  Loss  of,  48 
Carnarvon,  Lord,  82  ;  his  character, 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  Writings  of,  350 
"Cave,  The,"  121— 131 
Cecil  Club,  The,  212 
Chamberlain,   Right    Hon.    Joseph, 

and  small  holdings,  89,   138 
Charles  I.,  151 
Charles,  Sir  Arthur,  203,  233 
Chiltern     Hills,     The,     cradle     of 

aristocratic    conspiracy    against 

Charles  I.,  35 
Christian,   Prince,    138 
Church  of  England,  The,  308,  351, 

352 


355 


356 


TORY  MEMORIES. 


Church  of  England  in  Wales,  277 

Church  and  State,  danger  of  dis- 
ruption, 28,  308 

Churchill,  Lord  Randolph,  97,  254 

Cicero  quoted,  45 

Clubs,  Tory,   193 — 215 

Cobbett,  William,  Disraeli's  esti- 
mate of  his  style,  25,  286,  340 

Cobden,  Richard,  122 

Colchester,  Lord,  212 

Collins,  Mortimer,  184 — 187 

Commons,  House  of.  Deterioration 
of,  352 

Co-operative  farming,  294 — 296 

Cook,  Dutton,  204 

Cornhill  Magazine,  The,  197,  199 

Corry,  Montagu  {see  Rowton,  Lord) 

Cotton,  Dr.,  Dean  of  Bangor,  161 

Coulton,  David  T.,  editor  of  the 
Press,   2,   59,   239 

Country  clergymen,  166 

Country  gentlemen,  diminution  of 
their  prestige,  164 

County  Government  Bill  of  1888, 
164 

Courthope,  Mr.,  241 

Crabbe,  George,  69,  75 

Creighton,  Bishop  Mandell,  234 

Cross,    Lord,    135 

Crown,  Power  of  the,  43 

Curtis,   Mr.    G.    B.,    231,   237,    238 

Curzon,  Lord  (second  Earl  Howe), 
III,  "3,  157 


Daily  Telegraph,  The,  139 
Danvers,  George,  207,  208 
Day,  The,  39,  129,  131 
Derby,  Lord  (the  fourteenth  Earl), 
his  refusal  to  form  a  Ministry, 
13  ;  his  indiscretion  in  offending 
Roman  Catholics,  29  ;  anecdotes 
about,  43,  92 
Derby,  Lord  (the  fifteenth  Earl),  54 
Dickens,  Charles,  24,   153,  313,  323 
Dimsdale,  Baron,   104 — no 
Disraeli,    Benjamin,    Earl    of   Bea- 
consfield,  as  leader  of  the  Con- 


servative Party,  2,  3  ;  epigram 
on  Lord  Palmerston's  Govern- 
ment, 4 ;  on  the  Venetian 
Constitution,  8  ;  his  opinion  of 
Bolingbroke,  9 ;  his  personal 
appearance,  16,  31,  36,  63; 
condemned  by  Conservatives 
for  touching  Reform,  16;  on 
Whig  failure  at  Reform,  17 ; 
his  efforts  to  regain  Gladstone, 
21  ;  relations  to  his  party  in 
1859,  22 ;  admires  irony  in 
literature,  24 ;  writes  a  leading 
article  in  the  Press,  25  ;  re- 
lations with  the  Church  of 
England,  27,  42,  51  ;  contrasted 
with  Gladstone,  32 ;  sidelights 
on  his  character,  34  ;  his  views 
on  the  Civil  War,  35  ;  anecdotes 
of,  37,  40,  45  ;  comes  into  office 
the  third  time,  38 ;  views  on 
Parliamentary  Reform,  38  ;  ad- 
miration for  the  Whigs,  42 ; 
specimens  of  his  sarcastic  style, 
47,  50 ;  elevation  to  the  House 
of  Lords,  54 ;  gradual  loss  of 
popularity  after  1878,  56  ;  natur- 
ally an  aristocrat,  65 ;  his 
opinion  of  Tory  Democracy, 
254;  "Coningsby,"  5,  6,  44,  55> 
63,  74,  80  ;  "  Henrietta  Temple," 
44;  "Lothair,"52;  "Sybil,"  45, 
132,  306;  "Vivian  Grey,"  5; 
miscellaneous  references  to,  2, 
32,  165,  210,  213 
Disraeli,   Mrs.   (Lady  Beaconsfield), 

2,3,  45 
Dixon,  Hepworth,   181 
Dixon,  Miss  Hepworth,  275 
Dunckley,    Mr.,    on   encroachments 

of  the  Crown,  53 
Dunkellin,  Lord,  his  amendment  to 

the  Russell  Reform  Bill,  125 
Durell,  D.  V.,  202,  203 


Edgar,  J.  G.,  172,   176-7 
Edwards,  Mr.  Sutherland,  190 


INDEX. 


357 


ElchOj  Lord,   124,  129 
Eliot,  George,  297 
Ellicott,  Bishop,  55 
Escott,  Mr.  T.  H.  S.,  231,  244 
"Essays  and  Reviews,"  51 


F. 


Fawcett,  Henry,  208,  209 
Field  Gardens,  289 
Fitzmaurice,  Lord  Edmond,  250 
Fortnightly  Review,  241,  244,  245, 

247 
Fr user's  Magazine,  10 
Free  Trade,  14,  91 
Froude,  Hurrell,  307 
Froude,  James  Anthony,  10,  47,  56, 

165,  166,  167-8,  345 


Game  Laws  and  Toryism,  284 

German  Alliance  in  the  i8th  cen- 
tury, II 

Gilly,  Mrs.,  349 

Gladstone,  W.  E.,  his  opinion  of 
the  Press,  2  ;  "  the  half-regained 
Eurydice,"  14  ;  his  strategy  after 
the  Reform  Bill  of  1867,  41  ; 
and  the  Church  of  England,  42  ; 
anecdotes  of,  97,  122,  125,  145, 

345 

Glamis,  Lord,  108 

Globe,  The,  229 

Gorst,  Sir  John,  137 

Grant-Duff,  Sir  Mountstuart,  loi 

Graphic,  The,  229 

Greenwood,  Mr.  Frederick,  220,  221, 
222 — 23 

Greg,  Mr.  Percy,  230 

Grosvenor,  Lord,  his  amendment  to 
the  Reform  Bill  of  1866,  126 

Gurdon,  Mr.  Brampton,  his  co- 
operative farm  at  Assington, 
295 

"Guy  Mannering,"  252 


H. 


Halford,  Sir  Charles,  150 

Halford,  Sir  Henry  (the  physician), 

150,  151,   154,  155 

Halford,  Sir   Henry    (the    second), 

157—159 
Halford,  Sir  Henry  (the  third),  159 — 

160 
Halford,  Sir  John,  160,  290 
Halford,  Sir  Richard,  151 
Hamilton,   Sir  William,  309 
Hannay,  James,  174 — 184,  197,  251, 

270 
Harcourt,  Sir  William,  51 
Hartington,  Lord,   17 
Hazelrigge,  Sir  Arthur,  164 
Hemans,  Mrs.,  quoted,  64 
Herbert,      Lady     Winifred      (Lady 

Burghclere),   147 
Herbert  of  Lea,  Lord,  15 
Hook,  Theodore,  44 
Horace  quoted,  77 
Household  Words,  153 
Hughenden,    Buckinghamshire,    30, 

64 
Hyndman,  Mr.  H.  M.,  134 


Iddesleigh,   Earl  of  {see  Northcote, 

Sir  Stafford) 
Idler,  The,  173 
Irish  University   Education  Bill   of 

1873,  49 


J. 


Jacobite  memories,  141 
Jebb,  Sir  Richard,  119 
Jeune,  Lady  (Lady  St.   Helier),  97, 

134—142 
Journalism      and      literature,      the 

author's  connection  with,    i,   2, 

216 — 253  et  -passim 
Jowett,  Rev.  Benjamin,  119 
Junior  Carlton  Club,  213 
"Junius,"  25,  137,  251 


358 


TORY    MEMORIES. 


Kebbel,  Rev.  H.  (the  author's 
father),  149,  151,  154,  156,  160— 
162 

Keble,  Rev.  John,  307 

Kenyon-Slaney  clause  in  the  Edu- 
cation Bill  of  1902,  Sir  Richard 
Jebb's  indignation  at,  119 

Knowles,  Sir  James,  146,  245,  246, 
251 


Labour  Party,  The,  353 

Lake,  Dean,  of  Durham,  233 

Landed  aristocracy^  The,  291 — 293 

Header,  The,  187 

Leicestershire,  among  the  first  coun- 
ties to  adopt  allotment  system, 
288 

Literature,  Disraeli's  taste  in,  24,  32 

Literature  and  journalism.  The 
author's  connection  with,  i,  2, 
216 — 253  et  fassim 

Liverpool,  Lord,   155 

Lomer,  202,  203 

London  Correspondent,  Duties  of  a, 
227 

Low,  Mr.  Sidney,  252 

Lowe,  Robert  {see  Sherbrooke,  Lord) 

Lucas,  Samuel,  236 

Lygon,  Mr.  {see  Beauchamp,  Lord) 

Lyndhurst,  Lord,  23 

Lytton,  Lord,  quoted,   123 


M. 


Malmesbury,  Lord,   18,  213 
Manners,   Lord  John  {see  Rutland, 

Duke  of) 
Mansel,  Dean,  309 
Marsham,  Dr.,  301 
Martpn,  Sir  A.  G.,  202 
Martin,  Sir  Theodore,  147 
Martin,  Lady,   147 
Mitchell,  Mr.  (Fellow  and  Tutor  of 

Lincoln),  302 
MontKly  Review,  The,  249 


Morley,  Mr.  John,  208,  241,  244 
Morning  Post,  The,  219 
Mucklestone,    Dr.,   Vice-Provost   of 

Worcester,  302 
Mudford,  Mr.  W.  H.,  214,  232,  237 
Murray,  Mr.  Graham,  120 
Murray,  Mr.  John,  149  note 
Musurus  Pasha,  146,  219 


N. 


Napoleon,  Louis,  20 
National  Review,  The,  241 
Newman,  Cardinal,  181,  303,  308 
Nineteenth  Century,  The,  291 
Norfolk,  Duke  of,   and  the  Educa- 
tion Bill  of  1902,  119 
Norreys,  Miss  Rose,  136 
Northcote,  Sir  Stafford  (Lord  Iddes- 
leigh),  on  Colonial  Preference, 
91  ;  his  relations  with  the  Fourth 
Party,  143  ;  his  retirement  from 
the  Foreign  Office,   144 
Northern  Whig,  The,  188 
Northumberland,  Duke  of,  51  ;  and 
the  Education  Bill  of  1902,  119 


O. 


Ormsby,  John,  196 — 201 

Oxford  as  the  home  of  lost  causes, 

308,  309 
Oxford  Revival,  The,  344-5 
Oxford  Toryism,  299 — 312 


P. 


Pall  Malt  Gazette,  The,  26,  220 
Palmerston,  Lord,  and  the  Reform 

Bill  of  1858,  15,  20,  23,  121,  200 
Parliamentary    reformers,    Activity 

among,  130 
Parr,  Dr.,  201 
Pattison,  Mark,  230,  310 
Peasant  farmers,  291 
Peasantry,  English,  State  of,  before 

the  death  of  George  IL,  338 


INDEX. 


359 


Peel,  Sir  Robert,   151 

Pelham,  Rev.  Richard,   167,  168 

Pell,  Albert,   no,   117 

Pitt,  William,  243  ;  plans  for  relief 

of  the  poor,  338 
Plumptre,   Dr.,  Vice-Chancellor  of 

Oxford,  305 
Political  Register,  The,  25 
Polybius  quoted,  53 
Poor  Law,    The  old   and  the  new, 

337—340 
Pope,  Alexander,  24 
Press,  The,  2,  216 
Prothero,  Mr.  George,  242 
Prothero,  Mr.  Rowland,  241 
Public  Worship  Regulation  Act  of 

1874,  51 
Punch,  305 
Pusey,  Dr.,  305,  306,307 


R. 


Raikes,  Cecil,  his  opinion  of  Dis- 
raeli, 99 

Rambler  Club,  The,   193 — 210 

Read,  Clare  Sewell,  118 

"Redgauntlet,"  Disraeli's  opinion 
of,  24 

Reeve,  Mr.  Henry,  269 

Reform  Bill  of  1867,  The,  125 

Rhudd,  Dr.,   160,  161 

Riddell,  Mrs.,  247 

Ridley,  Lady,  142,  144 

Roberts,  Sir  Owen,  202 

Rose,  Sir  Philip,  59 

Rosebery,  Lord,  243 

Rossetti,  Dante  Gabriel,  208 

Routh,  Dr.,  President  of  Magdalen, 

303 
Rowton,   Lord,   47,   58,  59,   64,   67; 

letters  from,  to  the  author,  70, 

139,  229,  230 
Russell,  Lord  John,  17,  123 
Rutherford,     Dr.,     headmaster     of 

Westminster  School,  249 
Rutland,  The  late  Duke  of,  71  ;  his 

character,  81 
Rutland,  Duchess  of,  79,  147 


S. 


Sala,  George  A.,  172 

St.  Stephen's  Club,  214 

Saintsbury  Professor,  43,  213 

Salisbury,  The  late  Dean  of,  45 

Salisbury,  Lord,  86 ;  letters  from, 
to  the  author,  87,  89 

Sarcasm,  Disraeli's  power  of,  48 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  24,  72,  244,  340, 
346;  "Heart  of  Midlothian," 
240 ;  influence  of  Waverley 
Novels,  307,  347 ;  Journal  of, 
quoted,  348-9  ;  Mr.  Balfour  on, 
348 

Seeley,  Sir  John,  217 

Sewell,  William,  301 

Shelburne,  Lord,  12,  250,  251 

Sherbrooke,  Lord,  40 

Short,  Rev.  Thomas,  303,  304 

Small  Holdings,  89,  288  et  seq.,  296 

Smith,  Alexander,  179 

Smith,  Dr.  William,  249 

Smith,  Professor  Goldwin,  52 

Smith,  W.  H.,  129 

Sotheby,  H.  W.,  202,  204 

Southey  Robert,  264 

Spectator,  The,  52 

Standard,   The,  229,  230,  233,   235 

Stanhope,  Lady,  145 

Stanley,  Mr.  Arthur,  266,  283 

Stanley  of  Alderley,  The  Dowager 
Lady,  271 

Stanley  of  Alderley,  Lord,  261,  262, 
263  et  seq. 

Stebbing,  Mr.  William,  236 

Steele,  Dr.,   190,   191 

St.  Helier,  Lady  {see  Jeune,  Lady) 

Stockmar's  Life  of  the  Prince  Con- 
sort, 52 

Stokes,  Whitley,   195 

Strathnairn,  Lord,  287 

Symonds,  Dr.,  304 


T. 

Talbot,  Colonel,  279,  280 
Tennyson  quoted,  57,  107 


360 


TORY    MEMORIES. 


Terry,  Miss  Ellen,  136 

Terry,  Miss  Marion,   136 

Test  and  Corporation  Acts,  Repeal 

of,  15s 
Thackeray,  W.   M.,  on  great  men, 

5,  24,  116,  145,  163 
Times,  The,  235 
Tory  agriculturists,  288 — 298 
Tory  Arcadia,  149 — 170 
Tory  Bohemia,    171 — 192 
Tory  clubs,  193 — 215 
Tory  Democracy,  254 — 260 
Tory  inns,  313 — 318 
Tory     journalism     and     literature, 

216—253 
Tory  scholars,  201 
Tory  sportsmen,  261 — 287 
Trevor,  R.  A.,  203 — 207 
Trollope,  Anthony,  on  journalism,  i 
Tumbler  Club,  193 
Turner,  Sir  Charles,  202 


V. 


of 


Vaughan,     Halford,     Professor 

Modern  History,  309 
Vaughan,  Mrs.  Charles,  270 
Venetian  Constitution,  The,  8 
Village   children.    Strange   customs 

of,  327 


Village  life  sixty  years  ago,  335  et 

seq. 
Virgil  quoted,   17,  57,  83,  269,  316 
Voting,  Odd  reasons  for,  95 


W. 

Walpole,  Sir  Robert,  10,   11 
"Waverley  Novels,"  The,  307,  340, 

347.  350 
Webster,  Sir  Richard  (Lord  Alver- 

stone),  138,  139 
Whig  scholars,  201 
Whigs'    policy    of    proscription    in 

1714,    ID 
Whitty,    Edward,     187;    edits    the 

Northeryi  Whig,  188 
Wilberforce,  Edward,  editor  of  the 

Idler,   173 
William  III.,  7 
William  IV.,  150 
Wordsworth,  Bishop  of  St.  Andrews, 


Y. 


Yorkshire  Post,   Founding  of   the, 
226 


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